By Mrs Howe, Head of Junior School

There is something wonderfully nostalgic about the beginning of a new school year. The first chill in the morning air, shiny new shoes gradually losing their shine, conkers appearing on the ground and leaves beginning to turn. New pencil cases are still carefully organised, jumpers have yet to be mislaid and the long summer days suddenly feel a little distant.

Perhaps it is because we all remember those September days ourselves, the mixture of anticipation and uncertainty, the familiar rhythms of school returning and the sense that a new year offered the chance for a fresh start.

A few weeks into term, that feeling of newness is beginning to soften. Our new girls are finding their way around, friendships are forming and routines that felt unfamiliar on the first day are quickly becoming second nature. It is wonderful to watch them begin to feel that they belong.

And belonging matters enormously, particularly for girls at this age. Between seven and eleven, girls are beginning to work out who they are and what they are capable of. They are forming opinions about themselves, discovering their strengths and beginning to imagine the person they might become. We want them to make those discoveries in an environment where there are no assumptions about what girls should enjoy, what they should be good at, how they should behave because they are girls, or what they might become.

Here, every scientist is a girl. Every mathematician is a girl. The captains of the sports teams are girls. The expert coder, the accomplished musician, the talented artist, the curious engineer and the actors are all girls. The pupil contributing in assembly with something important to say is a girl.

We want our girls to find their voices and to know that those voices deserve to be heard. We want them to take intellectual risks, get things wrong, try again and put forward an idea even when they are not completely certain of the answer. Most importantly, we want them to have the freedom to grow into themselves, rather than into somebody else’s idea of who they ought to be.

Listening to Rabbi Charley Baginsky’s Thought for the Day this morning (September 25th), one line particularly resonated:

“Instead of the creation of a world in which women are edited into acceptability, let’s aim for a world in which we get to remain fully ourselves.”

Perhaps that captures something very important about these precious Junior School years. Our job is not to shape girls into a particular mould, but to give them the confidence, experiences and space to discover who they already are, and who they might yet become.