Head’s Blog – Friday 27 March 2026

This has been one of those weeks when we pack in all that is best about SCHS. On Monday, at the start of Women’s History Month, we reflected on how historical gender inequalities still happen today. We turned our focus to the plight of girls and women in Afghanistan who, since the Taliban’s resurgence in 2021, have been prevented from attending secondary school or university, restricted in their ability to work, and unable even to access healthcare. We learned about the rising maternal mortality rate amidst the growing numbers of teenage mothers who have been married off as child brides. And we heard of women’s quiet resistance as they found new ways of connecting, running businesses, and campaigning for change.

Today we have celebrated our third International Women’s Day conference, supported by fantastic alumna, parents and guests who offered the Years 9,10 and 12 workshops about their lives as creators, entrepreneurs, innovators, financiers, journalists, lawyers, medics and much more. I was then honoured to interview leading lights from the Women of the Future Awards: its founder, Pinky Lilani, and the Vice-Chair, Vicki Treadell, who served as British Commissioner in Australia, and in New Zealand & Somoa, as well as Deputy Commissioner in Mumbai. They have mixed with many of the world’s most powerful women and men, and offered such inspiring optimism for our girls’ futures.

Year 8 have certainly been planning for their futures this week on Tuesday’s Take Your Daughter to Work Day, exploring the mysteries of adult working lives and imagining their future pathways. Thank you to parents who kindly hosted girls – both their own and other people’s daughters.

I loved how the girls and staff then dressed up for yesterday’s World Book Day with such flair: I encountered Mr Wonka with an Oompa Loompa; Alice, a Mad Hatter and a White Rabbit; the March sisters, Percy Jackson, Jekyll and Hyde and many more. There was even Sherlock Holmes and quite a jazzy Dr Watson, who was then one of the terrific soloists at last night’s stunning concert, “A Night at the Musicals”. Fresh from a day of rehearsing with West End vocal coach Abi Gilchrist, the GDST Alumna of the Year 2025, the girls told the stories of their musical numbers with impressive musicality and commitment.

This evening I will be sharing in our Iftar event, and then I wish every success over the weekend to our netballers who are competing in the Surrey Schools finals on Sunday and the Sisters n Sport national finals on Monday, and to our gymnasts at the British Schools Gymnastics in Stoke. In yesterday’s sunshine, it was lovely to see the girls sitting out on the field relaxing and making daisy chains amidst all this activity, and I enjoyed sharing a game of ping-pong with them too.

Thank you to all of the parents who were part of Monday’s Friends of SCHS Annual General Meeting. My deepest thanks to all the parents, families and friends of the school for your support and encouragement, and for sharing your amazing girls with us. It is such a joy!

Ms Cathy Ellott

Head

Dear Parents,

Safety continues to be one of my key priorities and I have been very pleased to see the traffic-slowing measures that TfL have implemented on Tooting Bec Road. Please can I remind parents to be safe and considerate in their parking on Abbotswood Road and please avoid parking on the yellow zigzags outside the school.

This week we have celebrated British Science Week and the girls have been showing off their innovation and inventiveness in many ways, not least at the Year 9 Business Product Fair this afternoon. Year 12s competed in an inter-school science quiz at Alleyn’s and our Year 10s have been continuing their AI project work with colleagues from the Southwark Schools Learning Partnership (SSLP). We’ve had the performance of a Mandarin Play in school, and sixth form linguists going off to the BFI to find out more about Spanish dictatorships. The mathematicians have been at a Maths in Action conference whilst our classicists enjoyed a talk by an Oxford professor on the Heroes and Heroines of Mesopotamia. The Extended Learning Group for Art visited the new Lucien Freud show at the National Portrait Gallery, and our Year 7s and 8s competed in the GDST Science Spelling Bee. Our gymnasts and netballers then excelled in their national competitions last weekend and this week too. With all this going on, you’ll understand if the girls need a gentle time this weekend!

Developing an awareness around self-care is a key aspect of how we support our girls to flourish and I do encourage you to come to our parenting talk next Tuesday on “From Meltdowns to Meaning”. Learning self-efficacy was a surprisingly strong theme in the discussions I enjoyed at the latest meeting of the GDST Universities Committee which I co-hosted yesterday. As well as the focus that you would expect on curiosity and critical thinking; the ability to read and synthesise complex texts and data; and the importance of oracy and linguistic specificity and flair; there was a call for some more straightforward factors that support success. Universities told us that students need to learn the importance of showing up and appearing keen and enthusiastic; of respecting the absolute fixedness of deadlines; of demonstrating drive and determination; and being resourceful to combat what they see as one of the most worrying student trends: loneliness. Students need to connect with people in person, not just online, and be both supported and held to account. Through this committee, it feels that we are doing really important work in connecting the educational worlds of school and university so that together we can develop golden threads of core competencies and characteristics that continue to grow through a young person’s educational journey. It brings a calm clarity amidst the noisy clamour of AI futurists asking what education is for. That’s a question for another day…

Wishing you a lovely weekend, and my warm wishes to those in our school family who will be celebrating Eid next week.

Best wishes

Cathy

Dear Parents

As the sun shines on the day of the Spring Equinox, it is lovely to see the change of the seasons. The girls are hard at work practising for our new House Dance Competition which I am hoping will be a very joyful spectacle on the last day of term, and then term will end for pupils at 12:30 next Friday.

This week is Neurodiversity Celebration Week and I could not have been more proud of the girls who led our assembly on Monday and shared their experiences of living and learning with different neurodiversities. Their candour, courage, insight, humour and public speaking skills were deeply humbling, and my favourite moment was when a Year 7 girl looked out at the school with an amazing twinkle in her eye, saying “And look at me now!”. As the parent of a neurodiverse child, I know how much children need us, as the adults in their lives, to advocate for every one of them so that they are known and understood, and we continue as a school to strive to do this as part of our commitment to our values of kindness, respect, integrity and compassion.

I am always very grateful for parents’ feedback and am pleased to launch our Parents’ Survey as we plan our future strategy. You will no doubt have seen that the Government is changing the rules about phones in schools from April 2026, and details about our updated approach are available here.

I was one of many gleeful spectators at today’s Red Nose Day Sponge the Teacher event. I love that the girls are so great at being clever, ambitious and working hard, and then know how to be silly and have fun too.

Wishing you a lovely sunny weekend.

Best wishes,

Cathy

Cathy Ellott

Head