The Bigger Picture

March 2024: The Risky Business of Learning - and Why Failing Matters

As parents, our primary concern is the safety and well-being of our children, but a healthy dose of risk-taking in childhood, such as riding bikes or climbing trees, is an integral part of nurturing resilience and independence in our young ones. Additionally, fostering an environment that supports trying out new and unfamiliar concepts with learning, known as intellectual risk-taking, helps cultivate curiosity, creativity, and problem-solving skills. Claire Pavlovic, More Able, Gifted and Talented Coordinator in the Preparatory School at EHS, explains.

March 2022: Play's the Thing

In Westbourne and Prep the aim is to nurture happy, well-adjusted children with a love and curiosity for learning that will stay with them for life. Tapping into a child’s biological instinct to play helps lay that foundation. There’s a lot more to child’s play than fun and games as Helena Robinson, Head of Westbourne, the pre-prep department at Edgbaston High School, explains.

November 2022: Introducing Cognito Lessons

Critical thinking, problem-solving and creativity have topped a list of skills The World Economic Forum says employers will be looking for over the next five years and beyond. It’s a rapidly-changing world and one where those young people who can do what algorithms and artificial intelligence can’t will thrive. 

At EHS, educating the ‘whole child’ has long been our mantra. Nurturing every aspect of a young person from their academic progress to their social and emotional development is what we are known for and this term we’ve added another string to our bow with the introduction of Cognito Lessons. 

July 2022 - Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games: Games for Everyone 

The tagline for the Commonwealth Games 2022 is 'Games for Everyone' and that sits well with the idea of 'sport for all' that we subscribe to at EHS. In a blog written for the HMC, Headmistress Clare Macro reflects on how sport brings people together. Read more here.

May 2022: Preparing Students for the Future

The world of work is changing, and it’s estimated that up to 65% of today’s students will be employed in jobs that don’t even exist yet. 

In recent years, society has over-emphasised the value of academic success across a limited number of subject areas. The result has been a narrowing of the curriculum and young people missing out on opportunities to develop key life skills like confidence, resilience, critical thinking, creativity, communication skills and problem solving, often referred to as ‘soft skills’.

Employers already complain of a skills shortage crisis and 92% now place as much, if not more, value on these soft skills as they do on hard skills and academic qualifications. Here at EHS, however, we have never lost sight of our core mission: to nurture confident, considerate, and intellectually curious young women. Read more.

March 2022: Why Education is About More Than Just Academic Success

There’s no doubt that this is a generation under a lot of pressure with young people facing a very different future to the ones we faced ourselves. So how do we, as parents and educators, best prepare our children for this new world? It's a question that occupies a lot of our time at EHS and means that we take our responsibility as ‘parentis in loco’ extremely seriously. Clare Macro, Headmistress at Edgbaston High School for Girls, looks at the bigger picture.

February 2022: Why Single Sex Schools Work

It’s an emotive subject that’s come under intense scrutiny in the wake of Everyone’s Invited. So just what are the benefits of an all-girls’ education? Headmistress Clare Macro, sets out the case.