Chronicle Summer 2023

8 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

As we celebrate 40 years of co education, tell us what you have been able to do in your time as Warden to strengthen the co-educational ethos at Teddies. That’s been a real priority over the last two years. We are working to level up the numbers of girls and boys in the School, to make Teddies fully co-ed. Right now, the School is 59% boys and 41% girls. In September, 44% of pupils will be girls and the Sixth Form will be exactly 50:50. We’re extending and reconfiguring the boarding Houses so that we can have a perfectly even balance in the Shell in a few years’ time, hopefully by 2026. We’re also working on levelling up the facilities for girls and boys in sport. The first project starts this summer, with new floodlit netball and tennis courts being built behind Cooper Lodge. Is there anything else on the horizon in this area? There’s lots of work going on in this area. We’re restarting the tradition of Shields in the Dining Hall, not just to fill in the gaps in the record but also to celebrate the achievements of girls at Teddies in sport over the last 40 years. We’re adding to the photographs in the Martyrs Pavilion too, for the same reason. We’re also in the process of setting up a working party on integration, to do more to bring boys and girls together in their lessons, in co-curricular activities, across

Skene. She was a campaigner for social justice and a friend of Simeon, instrumental in the move to Summertown but for too long forgotten in the School’s history. It’s been painted by Adam Hahn, the Head of Art, and it’s going to hang opposite Simeon in the drawing room of the Warden’s House. I think it’s the first official portrait of a woman in the School’s history, and it’s long overdue.

and 14). For the 150th anniversary of the new buildings, the move from the centre of Oxford to Summertown will be the theme of the Shell plays next term. To mark 40 years since girls first joined the School, we’re commissioning research on the value of co-education, opening our fourth co-ed boarding House and talking more than ever before about equality of opportunity. All those anniversaries come together in the commissioning of a new portrait of Felicia

Ni Debhakam, Justice Kwapong, Cormac Lennon and Millie Tan walk across the Quad