Chronicle 687

26 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

Beyond these headline figures, another trend we sought to investigate was that of the role of gender in what is commonly known as ‘academic self-concept’, in other words a pupil’s perception of their own abilities. Current scholarship holds that co-educational environments reinforce this self-concept along traditionally ‘gendered lines’, in the sense that female pupils tend to view their abilities as weaker than empirical data would suggest in traditionally ‘masculine’ subjects such as Mathematics, the hard sciences, and so on, with the reverse being true of male pupils. Although difficult to establish quantitatively, in a qualitative sense it is striking that all members of staff consulted agreed that these issues were less pronounced at Teddies than elsewhere, and that there had been improvement in recent years, with several also pointing out the relative gender parity in top sets across the hard sciences. A possible explanation for this might be in the school’s approach to role modelling. As Emily Bernstein, Head of Geography, put it, the school has ‘rethought what co-ed integration means’ in its approach to the roles on offer to male and female staff and pupils, with a concerted effort being made, for example, to introduce relative parity in the number of male and female tutors in single-sex boarding houses. Outside of the classroom, Teddies continues to challenge national trends and averages. In Music, for instance, although the traditionally male-dominated Music

Elsa Hall, Darcey Wrigley, Izzy Pasley and Matilda Henderson in the labs on Girls and Women in Science Day

Technology A Level remains as popular with male pupils at Teddies as it is nationally, the school is closer to gender parity than the national average in almost every other area of musical learning, from the uptake of learning musical instruments to the study of Music at GCSE, A Level, and IB. Similarly, both genders are well-represented in other areas of the performing arts. Alex Tester, incoming Deputy Head Co-Curriculum, quoted a statistic, also referred to by almost every other participant, pointing out that 20% of the 240 pupils involved in Dance at the school (itself an exceptional proportion of the overall school population) are male,

same spirit, just as there is a drive for parity in terms of the staff assigned to boarding houses, there is a similar aim to ensure that male and female staff are equally represented in the coaching of traditionally ‘gendered’ sports. Jen Law, newly-appointed Director of Sport, stressed the value of an ‘equal offer’ in terms of sporting provision, including access to facilities. Unusually, for instance, first teams in field sports, whether male or female, will always have the same opportunities to train on the same fields, in an effort to reduce any sense of an unfair level of prestige value being assigned to one gender’s sporting achievement over the other. A recurrent phrase across the interviews was that ‘life is co-ed’, and there was general agreement that the integration of genders in life at Teddies is fundamental to the school’s attempts to shape well-rounded individuals, well-equipped to participate in, and contribute to, an integrated society. Reflecting on the school’s comparatively long history of co-education, Charles Wallendahl, Director of Teaching and Learning, credits this for the strength of the school’s culture of community and mutual respect, describing it as ‘a product of how long the school has been co-educational and how hard the school has worked at being progressive and moving in the right direction’. As many other schools across the sector begin to take the first steps on the path to co-education, Teddies remains as committed as ever to achieving the strongest sense of inclusion possible across its community, and will continue to develop its already mature culture of co-education further towards this goal.

a figure well in excess of the national average. Self-concept, then, seems to be of equally reduced significance in the arts, with the relatively equal uptake across genders seeming to reflect instead the school’s commitment to the value of free and creative expression. So, too, on the sports field is there a strong ethos of offering equal opportunities to pupils of both genders. With the single exception of netball – which remains girls-only due to the lack of a national competitive circuit for boys – every sport the school offers is available to both male and female pupils. In the

Tibaud Leake and Bethany Dowdeswell in the Spring Dance Show