SE CHRONICLE 684

8 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

Celebrating Co-education As we celebrate 40 years since Sixth Form girls joined St Edward’s and 25 years since we became fully co-educational, we talked to the Warden, to the new Sub-Warden, Clare Hamilton, to the Deputy Head Pastoral, Rachel Bellamy, and to pupils to find out why this aspect of a Teddies education is so central to our ethos.

The Warden on Co-education How important is co-education to the fundamental purpose of education? Education is about preparing children for the world in which they will be adults, so that they can play a full part in society and so that they can lead happy and fulfilling lives – so co-education is fundamentally important. It gives children more points of social reference, and it leads to greater emotional intelligence. Co-education makes children’s experience of school more rounded, more complete. The purpose of education can be achieved without it, but there’s no doubt that it’s more easily achieved – and more likely to be successfully achieved – when boys and girls are educated together.

What are the specific benefits to young people of having lived and worked as part of a co-educational community like St Edward’s? When boys and girls are at school together, they will have opportunities which are very unlikely to have been available to them in a single-sex school. In practical terms, boys at boys’ schools can’t usually take dance lessons, and girls at girls’ schools don’t often have the chance to play rugby. At a co-educational school like Teddies, they have those opportunities and they take them. When they leave school to go to university or into work, pupils will be in a mixed environment which is

entirely familiar, entirely natural – there’s a significant risk that children leaving single-sex schools find those transitions much harder. I think the experience of a co-educational school really helps children to develop universal interpersonal skills. Society and the opportunities for jobs are changing all the time, and none of us can know with certainty what skills our children are going to need in the future. But we can all be certain that the ability to relate well to other people – regardless of background, ability and, most relevantly here, gender – is always going to be a vitally important skill for life.