Blog posts in April 2012 
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Why should girls' schools have to make their case? A riposte to Lord Lucas
Sunday 29 April 2012
Categories: Careers, Girls' schools, Media Influence
If you read today’s Times or Daily Telegraph, you will see headlines that suggest that girls’ schools are a dying breed: “Pull your socks up or you’ll die out, peer tells girls’ schools”; “Girls’ schools ‘going out of fashion’, expert warns” – although the print edition of The Times has the alternative title “Girls’ schools give chauvinist peer a lesson in single-sex education”. Read the articles themselves and you will realise that they contain the opinions – and...
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The Martini Generation and mobile learning
Monday 16 April 2012
Categories: Education, Growing up, Technology & the Internet
Increasingly we are used to being “connected” every minute of the day. Smart phones are changing the way in which we live. We use them not only to communicate by voice, text and email, but also to keep our calendars, to tell the time, to access the Internet, to navigate, and so on. Mobile Applications (Apps) allow us to do almost anything. For those of us who are educators this is very exciting – smart phones are unbelievably cool – but for those whom we teach, this is normal – they...
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Forever friends...
Thursday 12 April 2012
Categories: Growing up, Parenting
I hear that at some schools girls are being discouraged from having a “best friend”. I think this is sad. It is true that there are perils in having one special friend. If she moves away, as mine did when I was 7, it is heart-breaking. I could not imagine ever having such a satisfying, complete friendship again. But of course I did, eventually. And all too often that friend who swears she will be your very best friend forever may move on leaving you bereft, as happened to one of my...
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Why we have too few women leaders...
Monday 2 April 2012
Categories: Careers, Higher Education, Role Models
If you have 17 minutes to spare sometime, do watch this inspiring video of Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer at Facebook, talking about the position of women in the workplace, and think how we are preparing our daughters to face the personal and professional challenges they will meet in the future.
Sheryl bemoans the fact that there are insufficient numbers of women at the top in so many key professions and positions of responsibility. She suggests we need to change this...