Grammar school replaces head boy and head girl with gender-neutral roles

A SCHOOL that scrapped its head boy and head girl roles to establish genderneutral titles has ended up with two male student leaders.

The Grammar School in Guernsey is now led by a “chair” and “vice-chairperson” – two boys – and a “student voice leadership team” – three girls.

Liz Coffey, the head teacher, said she did not want students to see jobs as being “gender specific” and the new arrangement “gives the students the experience of what it actually might be like when they enter the workplace”.

Mrs Coffey said. “It’s our responsibility to ensure young people are educated and made ready for that world.”

She explained that she wanted children to feel they have been chosen for a position “not because of [their] gender but because [they] are the best person for the position.

“Just like I am not a headmistress, I am a head teacher, it is important because of job credibility,” she said. “People will still draw a nurse as a woman when asked. This is another way to try to ensure stereotypes disappear. It’s a very good thing to have on your CV.”

This year, two boys took the roles of chair and vice chairperson of the board with three girls sitting on the student voice team.

Mrs Coffey said that she would look to address any issues of imbalance and that she hoped to destroy stereotypical gender roles.

“I want to guard against that and ensure there’s appropriate representation but it doesn’t concern me that it would ever happen,” she said. “It would maybe make us look at why there weren’t a proportionate number of candidates coming forward.”

Students can apply for the roles in writing, with references from their tutors. Then there is an election campaign and an interview with a panel of sixth-form management.

Natasha Devon, the Government’s former mental health tsar, has previously said that teachers should not refer to pupils as “girls” or “ladies” because it means they are “constantly reminded of their gender”.

She said that she would “never walk into a room in an-all girls’ school and say girls or ladies” because it was “patronising”. Rather than addressing children as “boys” or “girls”, she said that teachers should use gender-neutral terms such as “pupils”, “students” or “people”. Another reason not to use such gendered terms is because there may be transgender people in the room, she added.

Ms Devon said that using the term “girls” can evoke a sense that they have to do everything perfectly, which can “create a lot of anxiety” in children and teenagers.

Meanwhile, the term “boys” carries connotations of “being macho, not talking about your feelings, being told to man up”.

However, Cheryl Giovannoni, the chief executive of the Girls’ Day School Trust, said teachers should “celebrate women” and not attempt to “wrap girls in cotton wool”.