One of the many things that COVID-19 has revealed is the importance of female leadership on the world stage. In the Autumn Term, I presented a deliberately slightly provocative assembly in which I put it to the girls that many of the countries with the most effective responses to COVID had women at the helm: Mette Frederiksen of Denmark, Sanna Marin of Finland, Angela Merkel of Germany, Katrin Jakobsdottir of Iceland, Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, Erna Solberg of Norway, and Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan.
Additionally, women around the world have also made an enormous contribution toward the effort to combat COVID-19 on the front lines (70% of the world’s health workers and first responders are women) and in STEM fields where they have been leading research into the virus, creating trackers and developing vaccines, including Dr Özlem Türeci, co-founder of BioNTech, which helped produce the first vaccine and Professor Sarah Gilbert, the Oxford Project Lead for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine; do watch this very informative and inspiring video regarding the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
In the Spring Term, Spilios Theodoratos, the parent of a new joiner, who is Senior Data & Analytics Engineer at AstraZeneca Digital Health R&D wrote a wonderful blog that is worth re-reading. About the video, he emailed me: “The best part is that most of the key players are females! So yes, great future for women in Science a reality that I witness first hand here in AZ.” In the Summer Term, I proudly shared this recent article in a whole school assembly: role models and inspiration all the way!
This is why I am so very excited about the Junior School’s new STEM lab which will be completed over the summer holiday. I would ask that you all seriously consider making a donation - joining Jeffrey and Mary Archer who are lead donors, alongside alumnae who have so generously donated in recognition of the excellent teaching they received at St Mary’s. Teaching which enabled them to become the women they are today, pursuing interesting STEM careers in which they have found great fulfilment, in turn, through which they have enriched society.
We need our girls to be the next generation of compassionate leaders in STEM: our new STEM lab is an important contribution to address the ‘leaky pipeline’ by enthusing girls during their childhoods about their capability and the opportunities which are available.
We need our girls to be the next generation of compassionate leaders in STEM
It has been notable that in social issues women continue to lead the way: previously we heard from Malala regarding the importance of education for all; in particular girls in under privileged societies. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi started the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which has grown into a global network galvanised particularly by the death of George Floyd. The #MeToo movement was founded by Taran Burke to empower women around the world to speak up against sexual violence and harassment. Most recently, over the spring break this year, we noted the social media response to the tragic death of Sarah Everard accompanied by the ‘Everyone’s Invited’ UK platform started by Soma Sara. These issues and these women challenge us to think and to discern and to act. Our role as a Christian girls’ school is to discern what this means to us and looks like for our international community-based in Cambridge.
These issues and these women challenge us to think and to discern and to act.
We have always supported your daughters through our pastoral care programme which includes our PSHEE programme and our tutorial system. We hope that every girl feels that there is a teacher or tutor, nurse, counsellor, boarding staff member or Peer Counsellor to whom she can turn in school if she has anything that she wishes to discuss. We take student voice very seriously indeed and as a girls’ school wish to empower our students to be self-confident, reflective and compassionate young women.
We have also continuously sought your voice and views as our parent body about learning and welfare since March 2020 as a necessary aspect of fulfilling one of our school aims which is to supporting you our parents: and so have continued to walk in loving accompaniment with you in these challenging VUCA times of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
Last summer, we listened to feedback from students and alumnae regarding BLM and undertook a curriculum review and planned for a fuller programme of activity during the Autumn Term as well as during Black History Month in February. This term we have been listening to our older students’ views about the alleged ‘rape culture’ in schools. We have also been listening to our own young women’s responses to lockdown, social distancing and online learning: the voice of neurodiverse students including those with introversion and autism has been helpfully amplified.
Having reflected and discerned, we wanted to do more. We worked behind the scenes during the Spring Term on important matters pertaining to Inclusion, Diversity and Equality and the Summer Term saw the launch of our Inclusion Committee which includes student representation, staff representation and governor representation (Judy Clements OBE).
This Committee has undertaken some heavy lifting this Summer Term and we made use of time in June to support some detailed work, fruits of which will become increasingly visible next academic year as we add our voice and encourage girls to become leading advocates to end inequality. Ultimately, we take this from the profoundly radical Christian perspective as expounded in the Gospels including in the Biblical verse which Spilios cited in his blog: Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”.
We all have a duty and responsibility to safeguard our planet and acknowledge the impact of climate change. In terms of climate change, once again, some of the most important environmental activists have been women: Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ is credited with launching the global environmental movement; today, Greta Thunberg is the most recognisable climate activist in the world. Girls’ education, research shows, is key to building greater environmental awareness and containing climate change. This year marks the fifth anniversary of ‘Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ call to listen to the ‘cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’. The Papal encyclical drew attention to the precarious state of the Earth, our common home, called us to be stewards of God’s creation and aimed for Ecological Education within schools, making a ‘change for good’ and to help ‘protect all life, to prepare for a better future, of justice, peace, love and beauty’.
Five years on, a covid pandemic and three lockdowns later, Pope Francis’ words remain more relevant than ever: “Education in environmental responsibility can encourage ways of acting which directly and significantly affect the world around us, such as avoiding the use of plastic and paper, reducing water consumption, separating refuse, cooking only what can be reasonably consumed, showing care for other living beings, using public transport or carpooling, planting trees, turning off unnecessary lights, or any other number of practices."All of these reflect a generous and worthy creativity which brings out the best in human beings. Reusing something immediately instead of discarding it, when done for the right reasons, can be an act of love which expresses our own dignity. We must not think that these efforts are not going to change the world. They benefit society, often unbeknown to us, for they call forth a goodness which, albeit unseen, inevitably tends to spread. Furthermore, such actions can restore our sense of self-esteem; they can enable us to live more fully and to feel that life on earth is worthwhile.” Additionally, this year the UK will be hosting the delayed UN climate conference COP26.
Our eco-group has been strongly productive throughout the pandemic including lockdowns 1, 2 and 3 offering creative opportunities to generate solutions at home as well as at school. Our digital strategy which has come to the end of its second 2-year plan has delivered on a vision towards a near paperless community in which photocopying has been reduced and savings ploughed into the upgrading of Senior School teacher devices for better delivery of teaching in-person in the classroom and online.
We have looked more broadly at sustainability and again have done some heavy lifting via a Sustainability Committee comprising pupil advocates, staff and governor involvement – our plan will be officially launched in the Autumn Term. Additionally, Year 9 undertook a powerful piece of work on sustainability as part of their enrichment and cross-curricular studies during our inaugural June Jubilee Jamboree. Ely Cathedral’s ‘Heaven & Earth - The World in Our Hands’ July Festival aims to raise awareness, educate and inspire us all to protect our world. This event will feature exhibits with a focus on climate change plus talks on environmental issues: St Mary’s has produced a range of creative outcomes which will be on display during July.