Girls’ Schools Association Annual Conference

12 November 2007

Pat Langham, President of the Girls' Schools Association (GSA) and Headmistress of Wakefield Girls' High School, chose for her conference theme the importance of remembering those aspects of education and school life that could not be assessed or measured. She took as her reference an English version of a poem by the 13th century Persian poet Saadi:

‘If thou  of fortune be bereft
And of thine earthly store hath left
Two loaves, sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed the soul.'

At the GSA's annual conference in Leeds, Mrs Langham said , ‘If loaves are examinations and measurements, we now have a bread basket of definitive league tables all measuring, grading and ranking and all using different criteria. Point scores, subject combinations, grades, alleged hard and soft subjects, allowed and suspect combinations, and contextual data. We are about to encounter new guidance on science subjects with modern foreign languages not far behind.

‘Such tables were supposedly designed to help parents make comparisons, but what use are they? What really matters is that each and every girl achieves her potential, whatever that might be, so that no percentage is ever given priority over a person. What really matters is that we added value to her achievement and values to her educational experience.'

‘The hyacinths in the poem', said Mrs Langham, ‘are concerned with emotions, with passion and enthusiasm, with creativity and expression, all of which were just as important in today's education, as Einstein meant when he said that "imagination is more important than knowledge".

‘Even the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority advises teachers to build creativity into their lesson planning and schemes of work,' said Mrs Langham, ‘but I wonder how computerised marking will cope with that. 

‘Most academics live in their rather disembodied heads,' she continued, ‘and see their bodies merely as a form of transport. I subscribe to Daniel Pink's view that what we need now is more right brain thinking. If our left  brain dominance and directed thinking is sequential, literal, function, textual and analytic - which might have served us well in the past - we now live in a totally different age. What we need now is more right brain thinking that is characterised by the simultaneous, metaphorical, aesthetic, contextual and synthetic.'

Mrs Langham reminded her audience of nearly 200 GSA heads, that their current Year 7 pupils would be entering the job market in 2020 and retiring in 2072. ‘How should we be preparing our pupils for a world we don't know? For jobs which don't yet exist? Using technologies not yet invented? Solving problems we cannot imagine?

‘Long gone are the days of certainty of employment at the completion of any level of training or qualification and gone too is the motivation which that brought. Automation has taken over manual labour, computers are growing ever powerful. Increasingly clerical white collar work is done overseas while globalisation offers new opportunities but it offers them to everyone.  Predictions are that while I have had one job for my whole lifetime, they will have many. They will need to be flexible and adaptable as change will be a constant and the pace ever quickening.

‘Once we teachers had the keys to the kingdom of knowledge and we spent our days sharing this treasure. Now you can Google whatever you want to know.

‘Young children are confident in spirits, high in imagination, infinite in resources and eager to learn. For them everything is still possible. It is up to teachers to ensure that this continues until the day they leave our schools, as these are the skills which will increasingly determine who soars and who stumbles.'

 

Notes for editors

• The GSA conference is taking place at The Queen's Hotel, City Square, Leeds, 12 - 14 November 2007.
• The GSA is the only association that represents the independent girls' schools in England, Scotland and Wales, including all the schools in the Girls' Day School Trust.
• All media enquiries relating to GSA should be addressed to Sheila Thompson at Brown Lloyd James (sheilat@blj.co.uk) on 07958 307 637. 

Click below for a full transcript of the speech:

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