What does it mean to be a St Mary's girl?
What does it mean to be a St Mary's girl? Mary Ward had a distinct vision for girls and women, she believed they would 'in time come to do much'. She was an exceptional trailblazer at a time when theologians were still wondering whether women had souls capable of apprehending God - she even walked to Rome a number of times during the Thirty Years’ War to meet the Pope and answer their criticisms of her institute. Her vision was to educate young women in the Christian virtues and liberal arts so that they would be able to undertake more fruitfully their vocations in life. In her view, education was an advantage, not a danger. She did this through religious communities and schools throughout Europe. How are we to interpret this vision today at St Mary's Junior School?
I believe that Mary Ward would have approved of the book Rebel Girls! This book is familiar to all the girls in the school, as their respective classes have been named after one of them this year; from Ada Lovelace to Mary Anning, they are all rebel girls. Today, alongside Mary Ward, these women inspire our girls to be courageous, compassionate, generous in service and to have the confidence to challenge where they see injustice in this turbulent world.
If I were to distil our vision for modern St Mary's girls that Mary Ward would be proud of, I would do this under 8 qualities.
St Mary's girls are known
St Mary's girls are inspired
St Mary’s girls aim high
St Mary’s girls are nurtured
St Mary’s girls have attitude
St Mary’s girls have integrity
St Mary’s girls value community
St Mary’s girls are the future
St Mary's girls are known
I know each and every girl sat before me by name. We value the individual; each one of us is a unique creation in God's image. At St Mary's we don’t have a one size fits all approach – we offer a rich and varied curriculum so that each individual girl can find their talent and pursue it with passion and determination.
I recently toured family around the Junior School and I asked a Year 5 girl what they liked about St Mary's; she said she liked that it felt like "one big family". We have a familiar feel; the school is warm and personable so that the girls feel 'at home' here. I don’t want the school to feel like an institution, a Victorian factory view of education; rather, we are like a family home, with the teachers and I in loco parentis, caring for and nurturing your daughters individually so that they become their best selves in the Mary Ward context.
St Mary's girls are inspired
Education should be inspirational: through a creative curriculum we aim to offer an inspirational curriculum which excites and engages the girls. Every half term, the girls are immersed in a new topic, from 'Explorers' in Year 1 to 'WWII' in Year 6. This academic year we embarked on our High Performance Learning journey. If you were to have asked the girls a year ago what makes an effective learner, I am sure they would have given you very earnest answers about listening in class or reading at home every evening, which is all important, but research shows that with a robust teaching framework in which children explicitly understand the skills they need to learn they will perform more highly. This is exactly what High Performance Learning offers us. As a result of a design competition and naming vote we have 5 new school friends: Esmerelda the Elephant, Astrid the Ant, Octavia the Owl, Maisy the Monkey and Sylvie the Swan. The girls have been involved from the very inception of the characters so therefore have a real sense of ownership - they are now an integral part of teaching and learning, and over the next academic year we will begin to measure their impact on academic outcomes for the girls.
St Mary’s girls aim high
We know that St Mary's girls achieve highly. Last year in the Senior School an impressive 25% of students achieved all A*/A grades in their A Levels. Girls left St Mary’s to read History at Cambridge; Chemical Engineering at UCL; Biological Science at Imperial; Politics at Edinburgh and Classics at St Andrew’s University, to name a few. Clearly these results reflect 14 years of hard work and dedication to studies but many of those girls started their education in the Junior School – we provided them with an engaging and challenging curriculum that encouraged them to believe in themselves and aim high. At whatever level your daughter is working at, we want her to achieve to the best of her ability. Our Year 6 girls leave here with confidence in their ability and the drive to aim high and achieve.
St Mary’s girls are nurtured
Every one of our girls has god given talents and it is our duty to discover and nurture those talents; as Mary Ward said, 'do not bury your talents'. We have a varied and rich curriculum, with many extra-curricular activities on offer so that girls can explore their talents and find their passion, be it sport, music, performing arts or maybe Computer Science. This summer term, we have had some excellent showcases of our girls’ varied talents: the Year 5 and 6 Romeo and Juliet production, the success in the IAPS athletics championships, the brilliant Summer Concert and the RoboCup national finals where two of our girls came third in their category and we won a best teamwork award!
St Mary’s girls have attitude
We want our girls to leave St Mary's Junior School with attitude! They must be confident, brave and true to their convictions in a challenging world where 'so-called' fake news can make establishing fact from fiction very difficult. In naming each class after an inspirational women or girl, they have positive female role models to look up to. These role models have fought for what they believe in, and this is what we would like your daughters to do in turn. Mary Ward believed in this, and I believe that this is what sets us apart from many other schools; we should be active in our pursuit of justice and truth, not passive. We have done that this year in School through our charity fundraising for CAFOD, supporting our sponsor child Hani, the letters that Year 4 wrote to the Brazilian embassy about deforestation, and the engagement in topics that educate the girls about developing countries, their issues and ultimate potential. How can you recognize a St Mary's girl? I hope that through the polite and respectful girl on the surface you see a steely determination to fight injustice and seek out the truth in all they do and to be in service of others.
St Mary’s girls have integrity
As a Mary Ward school, we encourage the girls to believe in and live out the Mary Ward characteristics. This year we have focused on two specific characteristics: hard work and excellence and Following in Christ's footsteps. They may seem very serious and worthy characteristics but I believe we live out these characteristics daily. As a Christian school in the Catholic tradition, we follow in Christ's footsteps every day. We explicitly do this through our daily worship, termly mass and our commitment to RE teaching. This term Year 6 went on their annual pilgrimage to Walsingham and in September they went to the Diocese Schools’ Mass in Norwich. We are very proud to be able to run our Holy Communion preparation classes in school and this year 3 of our girls received their first holy communion.
St Mary’s girls value community
Pope Francis said, “the family is a community of love, where each of us learns to relate to others and the world around us”. As a St Mary's family, we also have to think about how we relate to each other – parents, daughters and the School. As in any family, there are challenging times, but as long as we all keep the best interests of your daughter at heart we cannot fail. In a society where community is moving increasingly online, I value our non-virtual, face-to-face school community and I think we can all agree that this is a special community that we all treasure. This year, we have sought to extend our community beyond Chaucer Road through outreach. We held our first ever STEM outreach day with our Year 5 girls and 27 Year 5 girls from Fulbourn Primary School and the Royal Academy of Engineering. The girls had a great day and we hope to continue to offer such outreach events in partnership with the Royal Academy.
St Mary’s girls are the future
In 20 years' time our Reception class sat here will be 25 years old; we cannot know what the world will look like then, but I am sure that our girls will be thriving in whatever path they have chosen to take. We do our very best to prepare them for this unknown world, particularly through our digital strategy. In Year 6 next year, each girl will have a one-to-one iPad and we will continue with our highly successful Tech Council. We are leaders in STEM and Computer Science, those forward-thinking subjects that will ensure our girls have the skills to work in collaborative and fast-paced work environments. Alongside our traditional values we like to think of ourselves as future-focused, just as Mary Ward was 400 years ago, be that through the digital strategy, HPL or the way in which we organize our curriculum.
