Rebecca Irwin – Acting Head

With International Women’s Day approaching with the important theme of accelerating action in terms of gender equality, we can reflect on two different aspects that we have spoken about at school that illustrate our focus on empowering students to forge their way the world in a bold, creative and supportive way. 

At the start of term I gave an assembly about a choir which seems to embody women coming together in a powerful way.  I spoke about the film and storyline of the Military Wives Choir.  The Military Wives Choir has grown into 74 choirs involving 2,300 women in the UK and in British military bases across the world. Singing in a choir has been proven to increase wellbeing and improve mental and physical health. The choirs therefore have a vital role to play by bringing women in the military community together to sing, share and support one another. They welcome all women whose lives are currently impacted by their military connection; the network supports each other and forms life-changing friendships that lead to new and uplifting experiences through singing. Clearly, military life across the services has its challenges. Some families move regularly to a new posting, while for others deployments mean long periods of separation. With choirs across the UK and overseas, many of our members join a new choir when they are posted, enabling them to become part of a familiar community built upon the joy of singing. And so I connected this for our students to take this idea and the opportunities on offer in school to try something new, to make a difference on others’ lives, keeping in mind that as women, we are a community that is stronger together.

We then also had our traditional ‘Move to Ealing’ day with an afternoon assembly to celebrate the school’s foundation, its move to Ealing in February of 1931, and its founding; and to affirm our proud history in girls’ education. I shared words of wisdom from previous Headmistresses such as our founder, Harriet Jones, who stated: ‘We do not “finish” our girls, but rather teach them that their education, in its highest sense, only begins when they leave us, and that unless they carry it on throughout their life they have missed the lesson of all others we would have them learn.” These thoughts still ring true today.  We were then all intrigued when our librarian, Dr Letters, told us about the Chick sisters, of whom seven attended the school between 1886 and 1906. They went on to be pioneers, actively involved in school life decades after they left.  The timeless message from Harriet Jones and the impact of the Chick sisters certainly seem to embody the theme of women taking control and making things happen, both for the benefit of each other, and by leaving a legacy of which to be proud.