News and Blog

By Heidi Soholt

There’s been a bit of debate about the merits of single sex schools this week. Cheltenham Ladies College has put something out about how in this ‘moral-less’ society, sending your daughter to a girls’ school will help to keep her away from booze, under-age sex and so on.

If my experience is anything to go by, I can’t say I’m all that convinced. I was packed off to a Convent school at the age of 11 by my father, who definitely believed all the hype about locking up your daughters. He also, somewhat mistakenly, thought that I’d get the best education around.

While my school did instil a certain feminist take on the world of employment – we were constantly told that we shouldn’t be put off pursuing traditionally male occupations – some of the teachers were distinctly ropey. While my super bright sister went straight into the A stream, which had the crop of the teachers, I languished in the Bs. The two B classes (strangely, or perhaps they were trying to be polite, there was no C stream) had to make do with some quite odd members of staff. There were a couple of nuns, one of whom took religion (no surprises there), the other history, and oh yes, the one confusingly called ‘John’, who taught geography. John was great – she just dished out As to anyone who had actually bothered to do their homework. My abiding memory of her is being chased around the school premises for not turning up to do ‘kitchen duty’ in the lunch break. Kitchen duty was absolutely hideous as you were thrown in to a room which stank of boiled cabbage only to have instructions barked at you in French by the ancient Belgian nuns who ran the catering side of things. As most of them had full-blown moustaches, you were always careful to check for hairs in your soup.

As soon as I hit puberty and the hormones started revving up, I became totally boy obsessed because of the distinct lack of male company. Every spare moment of the weekend was spent hanging out trying to meet this strange, unexplored breed, down the local ‘rec’. Boys were definitely top of our agenda – and bagging that elusive boyfriend would instantly put you at the top in the popularity stakes. Who cared what they looked/smelled/dressed like – as long as they were of the opposite sex we really weren’t too bothered. I remembered some right munters being proudly paraded around the school on the few days ‘outsiders’ were actually allowed on site.

I also remember the state of my best friend when she returned from a week’s skiing with the school in France. Just about every part of her face, neck, hands and arms was covered in massive love bites – she’d definitely made the most of being allowed out of the boarding house, not to mention doing her bit for anglo-french relations.

Every term the sixth formers would be bussed to some unsuspecting boys school for a ‘social’ evening. I needn’t go into detail here – let me just say WHAT WERE THOSE TEACHERS ON????? Talk about asking for trouble.

My parents, of course, had to pay handsomely for all of this. The school uniform alone made a dent in their income. We had to wear uniform right down to our underwear – all of which had to be labelled, and I can still see my mum hunched over my bottle-green knickers, painstakingly sewing on name tags. Her life would have been so much easier with Ann-Maree’s variety of easy to use labels and name tags, that’s for sure.

But, don’t let me put you off single sex schools now, just be aware that there are some pitfalls. I think I’ll be sticking to co-ed for my two though, better the devil you know as they say.

By Ann-Maree Morrison

Heidi’s experiences sound a lot scarier than mine! I was also at a girls’ college but abroad. Of course we had no nuns to speak of and some of the teachers were strictest of strict but in my case most people were pushed academically to go on to do well and most did.

The exclusion of boys did mean competition amongst girls was encouraged and noone was too shy to answer questions or show themselves up in front of the boys. However I don’t know if I would send a daughter to an all girls’ school if I had one …thank goodness I have 3 boys then!

The amount of catty comments and exluding from o-called “clubs” or long term “not talking to her” carry on that went on was unbelievable and I always look in shop at the local primary school when I see the boys wrestling in the playground but back to best buddies the next day, whilst the girls are doing just the same as in my childhood – exclusion due to size, hair colour, wrong clothes, wrong hobby, too pretty, too ugly, not the right day to get together with her today, you name it. I DO remember the green undies and the uniform inspections and hence perhaps I was destined to go into selling clothes labels with labels4kids!!!