Chronicle Summer 2024

10 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

Many famous single-sex schools have announced a move to co-education. Teddies has been co-educational for 40 years – how long do you think it takes to establish a fully integrated co-educational community? Has Teddies reached that point? I think that you can effect change in a culture very quickly – the academics at Teddies are a good example of that – but that it takes a very long time to make the change complete, comprehensive. I’d take a step back on this question because, despite all the progress which we have made in our society, there’s still too much inequality between women and men, and more generally too. We have more work to do in those areas at Teddies. On co-education at Teddies, 40 years is a long time but we’re still working to make our community fully integrated. One of the challenges is that most of the Houses are single-sex, most of the sports are played either by girls or by boys. That’s where friendships are often made, and it’s much easier in lessons and in unstructured time to gravitate towards your friends. Unless you’re actively addressing that issue, you won’t have an integrated community. That’s why we’ve started insisting on integrated seating in classrooms. That’s why we pair up boys’ Houses and girls’ Houses for social events and run mixed events for inter-house sport. The new arrangements in the Dining Hall next year will help too, bringing boys and girls together right from the start of their time in the Shell. We’re not there yet, but I think we’re a lot closer to having a fully integrated school than most co-ed schools. And the single-sex schools have a very long way to go! You’ve talked about wanting to make more of the School’s location in Oxford and you have introduced a number of innovative initiatives. Is there more to come in this area? We have done the heavy lifting in this area already, with the Oxford Lectures, Oxford Days, St Edward’s Fellows and all the local placements for Teddies Collaborates. I have a lot of other ideas for Teddies, but I think we have largely mined the Oxford seam! At the same time, we can always get more out of our amazing location. In the next few years, we’ll be finding more local placements for partnership work for pupils in the Lower School as we make service universal. As the society culture develops, there will be even more academics coming to give talks at

Samuel Esezobor, Harry Beale and Theo Williams in the Quad, Ludo Sears with pupils from Cutteslowe Primary School on a Partnerships Day, Judy Li studying in the Roe Reading Room