Chronicle Spring 2022

8 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

Emotional intelligence is a critical for that, and children graduating from a co- educational school will simply have more points of social reference: they will have seen more men and women among the staff as role models; they will have looked up to older girls and older boys together as role models in the school community; they will have seen equality, diversity and inclusion every day; they will be more ready for life in the real world. How are you promoting equality, diversity and inclusion at St Edward’s? That’s a question for a whole article, not one answer in an interview! I’ll try to give you a sense of our work on promoting EDI. The first step has been to harness the passion and interest of pupils, for whom these are rightly such important issues. We created in September two separate EDI groups, one for staff and one for pupils. They are both chaired by Rachel Bellamy, the Deputy Head Pastoral, who leads our

work on EDI in the management team, and they meet regularly – in fact, the level of interest among pupils has been so great that they have been meeting every week since September. Those groups have two purposes: firstly to get the views and ideas of the whole school community about the ways in which we can do more and better to make Teddies more equal, more diverse and more inclusive; and, secondly, they help us to hold ourselves to account as a management team, by providing feedback on the work that we are doing, for example, on the curriculum and on the recruitment of staff. Teddies is well known for its culture of enthusiastic participation across all areas of the School. What plans do you have to ensure that this continues? The range and level of participation by pupils at Teddies is one of the School’s greatest strengths, and I absolutely want that to continue. Self-agency – the willingness and

the ability to get started on a project or an activity, to persevere, and to see it through to completion or to a high level – that’s one of the most important qualities for pupils to take away from their time at school. The St Edward’s Award is the centrepiece of our plans in this area. It will be introduced in September, and it will provide a framework for pupils, working with their Tutors and their HMs, to track their involvement in school life and their progress through their school careers. It will cover academic work, super-curricular engagement, cultural activity, sport and service – as they reach certain levels of participation and engagement in the Shell, in the Middle School and in the Sixth Form, pupils will gain credit towards Blue and Gold awards. At their last Gaudy, we’ll celebrate pupils’ graduation from school – some of them with three golds to their credit, all of them ready for the world beyond Teddies. Are your family enjoying being part of the Teddies community? What do you all enjoy about being in Oxford? The opportunity to live and work here was one of the attractions for me in applying to be the 14 th Warden, and it has been great to be back in Oxford. Mary and Lizzie are really enjoying the Dragon – although I think I have enjoyed my reminiscences about the Dragon of the late 1980s much more than they have! We’ve all enjoyed being able to shop in the Covered Market, walk on Port Meadow, visit the Ashmolean and have supper at Brown’s, all without getting in the car. Oxford is an amazing city, and we are very lucky to live here. But, to come back to my answer to the first question, it is the warmth of the Teddies community that we have enjoyed more than anything over the last six months. It is not just that there is so much to enjoy in the life of the School, from the excitement of close matches on the playing fields to the thought-provoking lectures in the Olivier to the brilliance of Sweeney Todd , the Dance Show and the Choral and Orchestral Concert. There are also so many friendly, committed and inspiring people to enjoy it all with. That’s been true for Zannah, Mary, Lizzie and me, and I hope it’s true for all the readers of the Chronicle , pupils, staff, parents and OSE – all of us enjoying Teddies together.

Olivia Olisagu in a Biology lesson