There is rather less to do in school during the summer so I am able to go home in the evenings without taking my work with me – and read!

 

I started off with Anne Tyler’s Digging to America, which was on a reading list my son had been given.  I have liked Anne Tyler novels in the past but hadn’t read this one.  It was a delight.  The heroine is an older woman and it has a happy ending.  What more could one want!? The story focuses round the adoption of two Korean babies by two very different Baltimore families and there is much opportunity for the close social observation for which Anne Tyler is justly renowned.  I wait with interest to hear how teenage boys respond to this doyenne of contemporary women’s writing.

 

One of our Lower Sixth is hoping to write her extended essay for the AQA Bacc on Dostoyevsky and I am going to be overseeing it so I thought I had better reread at least a couple of the novels to get started.  I have now finished ‘Crime and Punishment’ and ‘The Idiot’ – in translation of course!  Dostoyevsky towers over most nineteenth century novelists in my view.  The novels raise profoundly searching questions about what it is to live a moral life.  While teeming with characters in a way reminiscent of Dickens, Dostoyevsky’s work is more commonly compared to Shakespearean tragedy.  Both ‘Crime and Punishment’ and ‘The Idiot’ deal with madness and look at what can push the human mind and soul to the edge of its limits.  In both novels, the life of the intellect is explored in a way that is rare in English Literature.

 

A rather easier read in many ways was ‘Isabel Allende’s ‘The House of The Spirits’ which is our book for the next staff/sixth form reading group in September and which Mrs Atkins will be introducing for us.  Again I had read this a number of years ago but coming back to it reminded me of the universal nature of much of what Allende describes.  The novel deals with three generations of a South American family living through a time of transition from a patriarchal feudal social structure, to liberal revolution followed by a brutal military dictatorship.  The nature of military coups sadly does not change and Allende captures the brutality of such regimes vividly.  The portrayal of a number of strong women strikes an attractive note (!) and the very un-British feel to the novel lends an air of exoticism.  I shall be interested to hear how those who come to our reading group have responded to it.

 

A complete contrast to these was ‘Outliers’ by Malcolm Gladwell, highly recommended and lent to me by Mr Kavanagh.  This is a simply fascinating read.  On one hand it challenges the belief that those who succeed in our society are simply the best.  When you were born and where plays a huge part in the subsequent destiny of the people Gladwell uses as his examples.  On the other hand, he makes it clear that the sheer number of hours spent on a specialism plays a great part in ultimate success, – 10,000 being the number Gladwell believes is the key to making it to the top.  Although most of the examples are from North America, many are also well known in the UK and the points he makes have worldwide significance.  It makes you think about which airline to use and I am wondering about sending everyone off to the rice fields of South China!

Miss Evans

30 July

 

The Independent weekly education section has had its problem letter of the week, one commenting on charitable status for independent schools, – a parent wrote they were concerned that they already pay for state education through taxation, yet the charity commission new rules may push fees of independent schools up by insisting on more means tested bursaries.

 

Hilary Wilce, the journalist who runs this feature, replies implying that independent education is somehow responsible for the gap between rich and poor in our country.  This is nonsense.  7% of children in this country go through independent schools with tens of thousands of those already being on means tested bursaries, ie coming from  a low income group.  There is no sudden income gap between the, say, 5% who have been at independent schools on full fees and the other 95% of the population.

 

Far too much uncritical commentary goes on in the national media that deliberately misleads about the work that goes on in schools like KEHS.

 

There is an uneasy relationship between social mobility and income gap.  Social mobility only has any meaning if you have an income gap.  If you don’t, social mobility has less meaning.  The policies to increase social mobility, meaning that more people will fall down as well as go up, have nothing to do with making the income gap smaller.  It is merely a different group of people that resent another group.  Making the income gap smaller is what would stop the fragmented society of which politicians and Hilary Wilce speak.

 

At KEHS we encourage the girls to have values that are not all about judging people by how much money they make but about valuing service to others.

 

1^st August

 

There appears surprise and cries of injustice that children of parents who are holding down professional jobs, should themselves achieve the A Level grades to go to good universities.  If the reverse were true, it would be just as much a concern as the belief that we live in a country where many children are not getting good A Levels despite their formal education because both parents are in lower status jobs.  Discriminating against young people such as girls at KEHS who achieve excellent A Level results will benefit no one

 

If it is true that say three quarters of 18 year old could succeed at university level, then the problem is always one of supply and unless university places are expanded whatever system is used will be unfair, as some will be rejected.  The problem is exacerbated because we have a hierarchical view of universities based on fairly dubious data just as with schools.  If we could get away from that it might be possible to value a university education for what it is not for its social kudos.

However it is unlikely three quarters, or even half of young people are suited to what universities have offered – an in depth academic education.  It is worth remembering that it is this type of education that gives us the present statistics that show a university education leads to higher salaries through life.  Current thinking is to broaden the university offer, including very different types of course to students with   a different academic profile.  There is no evidence to show that this will lead to more earning higher and gaining more benefits.  We don’t know whether it is the fact you have been at university for three years that leads to the current success profile of society or the nature of the education in those three years.   If it is the latter, then changing universities is not going to help close the income gap.  At KEHS we are offering a scholarly academic education that has stood many generations in good stead in whatever walks of life they have found themselves.  Through the challenging subjects that we offer, we are developing intellectual rigour, the ability to think critically and independently, to be creative, approaches that can be applied to the rich variety of 21st century opportunities.

 

August 3^rd

 

Visited the National Portrait Gallery on Saturday and was struck again by the nineteenth and early twentieth rooms that show picture after picture of  men wielding power.  Particularly striking are two of group portraits, one of the First World War Cabinet and the second of the First World War Generals.  Obviously not a woman in sight.  Then Harriet Harman dares to suggest that as many women as men at the top of government would lead to change and might be a good thing.  It is hard to disagree.

 

August 4^th

 

The huge controversy concerning qualification standards at UK universities reflects the endless similar debate in schools. When a government select committee accuses UK universities of allowing standards to slip (the number of first class degrees having doubled in the last few years) vice chancellors unite in defending their quality mark.

 

In the same way schools and education secretaries are derided when GCSEs and A Levels results improve for 20 years running.

 

The two might be linked.  As far more 18 year olds go to university with grade As, it might be reasonable to expect there will be more first class degrees, three years later.  Schools have long been judged on the quality of entry and value added performance tables have been a way of showing that some schools are doing a sterling job despite raw exam results looking moderate.   A school that took in bright children and failed to get good exam results would be presented as failing, and those who took in bright children and did get good results is presented as adding nothing.

 

The universities have had a habit of arguing the other way. When young people have come to them with top A Level results and then failed to achieve at the highest level, the blame has been directed well away from the university – it has variously been A Level’s fault for not being demanding, the school’s fault for teaching in the wrong way, the young person’s fault for being a sponge, the parents’ fault for pressurising so that when the pressure goes the young person collapses.  The responsibility that has been put on schools’ shoulders to improve on what comes to you, with failure to do so being the school’s failing, has been singularly lacking in the mind set of higher education.  

We pride ourselves at KEHS in preparing young women not just for success in getting to the university of their choice but succeeding once they get there.  It is not always comfortable and we have to keep reminding sixth formers and sometimes their parents that being able to operate as a fully functioning independent young adult student does not suddenly happen in day one at university.  We encourage the independent approach to learning throughout the sixth form as well as the intense curiosity about the world in which we live that lies behind the real desire to learn.

 

6 August

 

There continue to be ongoing storms about Harriet Harman’s suggestions that both men and women need to be represented in power structures.

 

‘We have come in from the outside, we’ve come of age.  We’re in from the cold’, said Harriet Harman to a Sunday newspaper on the subject of women political leaders.

 

‘In a country where women regard themselves as equal, they are not prepared to see men just running the show themselves.  I think a balanced team of men and women makes better decisions’.

 

Harriet Harman was educated at a girls’ school, St Paul’s Girls’ School in London, a not insignificant fact in understanding why she can see that things could be organised differently.  Girls’ schools up and down the country have been run by generation after generation of women and one of their roles has been to show that it is possible to have highly successful institutions that operated differently to the prevailing culture.  Apart from the fact these success stories are almost exclusively headed up by women, they are less aggressively competitive, less strongly hierarchical, much given to debate and finding ways forward that can take along most members of the community, concerned to work out ways of managing things that don’t create winners and losers.  Harriet Harman breathed this atmosphere at a significant stage in everyone’s development, and it shows.

 

KEHS is a school that shows there are ways of running organisations that are different to the ones the girls see in so many other walks of their lives. The girls will have a real choice when they come to head organisations of their own.

 

 

We have just celebrated the school’s 125th anniversary with an action packed year of events. A gallery of all the lovely images will appear shortly on the school website. However if you would like to share your memories of last year (or of KEHS generally) then do post your comments here! The picture above shows the launch of the school’s ‘Portrait of a School’ exhibition with the artist Stephen Earl Rogers, together with Sarah Evans and Hannah Proops.