Whenever I do training with colleagues at the beginning of a term, I am reminded of the huge privilege we have to share each day with young people who can challenge and shape us as much as we support them. Perhaps I need to remember that the same applies to our brilliant colleagues.
Recently, I found myself listening to two senior colleagues talking about friendships they had made at school. They were specific about the importance of girl friendships and their unique value. Friends who have your back through life, who know your younger self and have seen you change, fail, grow, and succeed and are still there decades later. It struck me how these childhood friendships remain a source of strength, perspective, and deep trust.
As a man working in an all girls school, moments like this remind me how much I continue to learn from listening to women’s experiences. Observing the women I work with and how they are with friends often leaves me in awe of the emotional depth and loyalty that is profoundly powerful. Schools and single sex schools in particular have a responsibility to create the conditions in which these relationships can grow in healthy, supportive ways. There is no better chance to form lifelong friendships than in an environment like ours, where girls share a breadth of experiences and grow up together.
Research consistently highlights the importance of friendships during adolescence. Positive peer relationships are strongly associated with improved wellbeing, greater resilience, and stronger engagement with learning¹. For girls, friendships are often central to identity development, providing a space for emotional expression, belonging, and validation². Girls also process stress and challenge through relationships, making the quality of those relationships especially significant³.
In single sex environments, many girls report feeling freer to be themselves, less self-conscious and more willing to take emotional risks⁴. Without additional social pressures from mixed gender dynamics, friendships often develop with greater honesty and intensity. For many parents, this is one of the great strengths of an all girls education, a space where relationships, confidence, and voice develop alongside academic ambition.
Of course, friendships are not always straightforward. Moments of conflict, exclusion, or misunderstanding can be deeply upsetting. Research shows that, when well supported, these experiences help develop emotional intelligence, empathy, and resilience⁵. Our role as a school is not to remove every difficulty but to help girls navigate them with confidence and care.
This is where our friendship focused work through Girls on Board aligns closely with our values. In the sessions that every girl in Year 10 and below does each term, the emphasis is that friendship difficulties are normal, temporary, and solvable. Rather than focusing on blame, girls explore group dynamics, build perspective, and develop practical strategies for moving forward. Importantly, they retain their self-worth and sense of belonging. We continue to learn with them and gently challenge, for example, nudging them about the variety of friendship groups, that experiences are not static, and that every girl deserves to be included and celebrated.
For parents, trusting a school with your daughter’s education also means trusting us with her relationships, much of which is experienced through school. Friendships matter not just now, but in the lives your daughters will go on to lead. When we help girls build strong, healthy friendships at school, we are supporting their wellbeing today and laying the foundations for relationships that may endure for years, with the same quiet certainty: friends who have their back for life. What a privilege.
References
- Wentzel, K. R. (2017). Peer relationships, motivation, and academic performance. Educational Psychology Review.
- Rose, A. J., & Rudolph, K. D. (2006). A review of sex differences in peer relationship processes. Psychological Bulletin.
- Taylor, S. E. et al. (2000). Biobehavioral responses to stress in females. Psychological Review.
- Sullivan, A. (2009). Academic self-concept, gender, and single-sex schooling. British Educational Research Journal.
- Hartup, W. W. (1996). The company they keep: Friendships and their developmental significance. Child Development.
From the Headmistress 