Balancing Act

Helping girls achieve the right balance and develop a sense of self-worth and hope for the future is at the heart of a Sherborne Girls education.

Outlining her vision for the role, our new Assistant Head for Pupil Aspiration and Wellbeing, Head of English, I/c Debating, Louise Troup, aims to leverage all the wonderful opportunities already available for girls to voice their opinions, make a difference and have fun.

As an Old Girl, parent and teacher, I have a unique perspective on what it means to

be a

‘Sherborne Girl’ : self-confident and world-aware but with a bit of Dorset ‘ softness ’ .

I see this role as a wonderful opportunity to combine my work inspiring girls to appreciate our language and literature with a second complementary remit: supporting them to be the best that they can be whilst ensuring they are happy. Make no mistake - our girls are happy, even with exams looming. ‘Wellbeing

’ is often approached as a corporate box-ticking exercise. We feel it’ s more helpful to think about girls achieving the right balance in their lives and developing a healthy sense of selfworth. With the relentless pressure from social media, we need to empower them to feel valued, listened to and hopeful.

So much good work is already being done at Sherborne Girls to support ‘ wellbeing ’ : the brilliant socials programme; our family-style houses; the pupil-led initiatives such as the ‘Wellbeing-Hub’ ; wonderful whole school events like The Castle Challenge which lift everyone ’ s spirits, and so much more.

To this, I would like to bring an invigorated Student Voice programme. We believe that the girls need to feel truly listened to so that they understand how the decisions that affect them are made. When it comes to achieving ‘balance ’ , the tutor should be the most important person in the girls ’ school lives. So, I will be working with colleagues to strengthen our one-to-one tutoring programme – better matching tutor to student across the School.

‘Aspiration ’ is another ubiquitous word. For my purposes, aspiration is about hope. We want our girls to feel a sense of real hope about themselves and their futures. Ironically, we can achieve this by making them more aware of the world outside, as long as we also equip them with the belief that they can change it for the better.

We already do this through the highly successful CCF programme, Debating Matters and our award-winning community work. Let us now apply this thinking to all our girls, continue to strengthen our focus on entrepreneurship, offer more wideranging careers preparation and find even more ways to allow our girls to be creative, collaborative and communicative in the real world.

The spirit of Sherborne Girls is well captured by our weekly ‘Group 4’ Running Club. We may be the slowest but we have the most fun! For all of us, aged 13-51, just completing the intervals is aspirational! And the lunch is great…