Schools Guide

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Every girls’ boarding school has a unique ethos defined by traditions and culture, but collectively we share the view that it is our girls-only environment that creates a special kind of vibrancy.

Our schools emanate energy and our pupils develop confidence that empowers them to achieve their best through selfdiscovery and ‘risk-taking’, without inhibition. Eight of the top ten places in the Daily Telegraph’s 2008 A-level league tables are GSA schools, and over 94% of girls leaving GSA schools after A levels go on to higher education.

I have a long-standing interest in the way girls learn, how they improve their study skills and exercise their intellectual agility, and I encourage them to pursue their aspirations. I firmly believe that girls gain infinitely more within a single-sex classroom, but that does not mean we isolate our girls from boys. An intuitive girls’ school will get the balance right between single-sex learning in the classroom and the provision of a mixed extra curricular programme.

At Queen Anne’s, recent ventures with boys’ schools include the staging of Twelfth Night with the Oratory School, and a series of concerts and masterclasses at which boys join our girls for professional tuition. The Oratory School and Shiplake College also join us for ballroom dancing classes. Each week the would-be ‘Strictly Come Dancers’ are coached by professionals, culminating at the end of the season with a friendly competition between dance couples. As well as undertaking the rigorous training the activity demands, the girls and boys learn to work together and establish firm friendships.

Public speaking is another area where our girls integrate with boys in competition. It provides them with an ideal opportunity to practise analytical skills and develop confidence in the delivery of their work. Our teams compete with boys and girls not only from the UK, but also across the world, at the International Independent Schools’ Public Speaking Championships.

In sport, our 2009 Youth Olympic medallist, Olivia, is a shining example of a girls’ school pupil who, encouraged to ‘take a risk’ and try something different, took up rowing less than two years ago. She has since won several competitions and gained gold and bronze medals at the Youth Olympics in Sydney, competing alongside Team GB’s young men and women. Back at school, Queen Anne’s provides an academic timetable to fit with her training demands and on-line resources for support when she needs it, thus giving her the best of both worlds.

As a Grey Coat Hospital Foundation school with close links to the United Westminster Schools Foundation, one of the special features of Queen Anne’s is that we are an independent boarding school for girls, but within a family of different types of schools that includes co-educational and maintained establishments. The Foundation schools have taken part in a drama workshop at Westminster Abbey to mark the abolition of the slave trade, they compete against each other annually at an athletics championship, and the schools’ sixth formers exhibit their art each year at a London gallery.

Whether in sport, music, drama or art, friendships with boys are made and sustained, or sometimes not, as the case may be … that is part of growing up. However, what we can be sure of is that we are enabling our girls to grow into confident individuals in a girls-only environment, with the addition of opportunities to work and have fun with boys. It really is having it all.

To find out more about the development and education of girls visit the GSA’s website for parents, www.mydaughter.co.uk, which provides expert opinion and useful advice on all aspects of raising and educating happy, fulfilled girls.