Launch of Designing the Future of Girls’ Education, a GDST Insights Report and Framework

We are proud to launch Designing the Future of Girls’ Education, a GDST Insights Report and Framework, as part of our latest series of innovative research supporting the specific needs of girls, in all learning environments. The education of girls was central to the founding of GDST schools over 150 years ago, and it remains at the heart of our modern-day mission. The report is an essential guide for parents, educators and students in helping girls realise their ambitions.

As a global voice on the design and delivery of world class girls’ education, Designing the Future of Girls’ Education aims to enhance educational practices for all girls, worldwide and emphasises the importance of creating environments where girls can learn without limits.

As a shaper of modern, future-looking girls’ education, the GDST highlights the transformative power of education that is designed for girls. As a values-driven organisation the report provides an opportunity for us to share our experience, knowledge and networks to support better outcomes for all girls in all educational settings, so they can prepare them to lead lives without limits in a world that is still far from equal.

(Find out more and download the report)

This report showcases the GDST’s expert knowledge to provide parents, educators and students with the tools to understand how to enable girls to achieve their full potential in a world still characterised by inequalities and personal prejudices.

It brings together the views and experiences of contributors including Edwina Dunn OBE, Founder of The Female Lead; Professor Sarah Smith OBE, Head of Economics at the University of Bristol, and Mary Ann Sieghart, Broadcaster and author of The Authority Gap, to take a deeper dive into three principles of educational provision:

Girls in the Classroom

All those involved in education are urged to do everything they can in the classroom to close the gap in authority and confidence between boys and girls. Contributors provide illuminating accounts of how they encourage girls to find their voice and then use it with conviction and courage. Heads, teachers, students and experts emphasise discussion and collaboration, in tandem with embracing complexity and failure, as paramount to enabling girls to learn without limits.

The Curriculum & Co-Curriculum

The second principle explores the importance of delivering a forward-focused curriculum and co-curriculum that removes barriers, breaks stereotypes and develops essential skills for girls. The report explains why educators must remove barriers to STEM subjects and sport participation for girls during their time at school. It goes on to explore the urgent need to provide girls with the right conditions and opportunities to develop their leadership skills, financial literacy and entrepreneurial intentions.

Culture

The importance of forming an unwavering girl-focussed mission acts as a springboard for the final principle, which is shaped around how school culture can be used to deliver better outcomes for girls. This chapter looks at why it is important to discuss, openly, the challenges girls will face in their lives and careers. Our contributors also discuss the importance of finding internal and external role models for girls, with particular emphasis on teachers as role models.

Cheryl Giovannoni, Chief Executive, GDST, said: “Girls’ schools play a critical role in preparing girls for the real world, and work hard to close gender gaps in areas such as STEM, sports participation and leadership positions. The girls and young women in co-ed schools also deserve to learn the necessary skills to navigate a world that is still characterised by structural inequalities and personal prejudices. They need to learn how to challenge and influence authority, find effective forms of self-promotion, and to pursue a less-prescribed career path. I hope these new insights will spark action for schools to educate the next generation of girls with tried and tested principles that will enable them to achieve their full potential.”

Dr Kevin Stannard, Director of Innovation & Learning, GDST, said: “Decades of independent research has shown that girls behave differently in the presence of boys, often to their own detriment. Co-ed educational environments create unintended constraints on, inter alia, girls’ academic risk taking, their assessment of their own abilities and their subject choices. All-girls’ schools show just how artificial those constraints are, and what can be achieved when they are removed. Our own research shows just how that difference is realised, and the contributory factors include not just what goes on in the classroom, and what options are made inviting and accessible in the curriculum; it extends to the whole ecology of a school. Our aim is to use our expertise in educating girls in dedicated settings, to identify those factors that might still be applied even in co-ed settings, in order to ensure that girls are no longer held up or held back from realising their potential, wherever they go to school.”

Our ambition is for Designing the Future of Girls’ Education to empower all educators to unlock the full potential of girls in whatever school they attend. In addition, we invite families to use it when making the important decision about which school will best enable their daughters to discover their passions, reach their academic potential and thrive in the future.

Discover more about Designing the Future of Girls’ Education