Roedean Old Girls pledge to defend single-sex status
Former pupils prepared to vote down any changes to royal charter that may remove female exclusivity
A LEADING girls’ boarding school has become embroiled in a row with alumnae “rebels” who have vowed to block any changes to its royal charter that could see the admission of boys.
The £42,000-a-year Roedean School, in Brighton, was founded by three sisters in 1885 to prepare young women for entrance to Cambridge.
But some Old Roedeanians fear the provisions in the charter – which says that it exists to further the education of girls – may now be watered down.
Last week, Vivien Smiley, the interim chair of council at Roedean, told alumnae that the school intends to review its charter, explaining that it has not been updated since 1938. A faction of former pupils – who previously called themselves the “governors working group” or GWG – worry that Roedean’s recent financial investment in Deepdene, a coeducational preparatory school in East Sussex, is a sign that the school could eventually open its own doors to boys.
Old Roedeanian Emily Campbell, 51, said: “The boys issue worries us. The whole ethos for Roedean has been about women. If you add boys, it’s a different school with a different ethos.
“It is a huge concern for all the governors. It’s a non-starter. The fact that they invested in a co-ed school [means] we are concerned that they are going to try and change the charter to add boys.”
Roedean allows Old Roedeanians to become “governors” of the school.
The school’s charter states that any major changes would need to be voted through with a 75 per cent majority at an extraordinary general meeting, where all present governors have one vote each. Former pupil Sara Lawrence, great- great niece of the school’s founding sisters, Penelope, Dorothy and Milicent Lawrence, said that the possibility of admitting boys would be “faintly ludicrous” and “self-defeating”.
She said: “Who would want to wipe out 135 years of feminist history? I believe any girl who has the chance to experience this sort of rare, female-centric education is incredibly lucky.”
Mrs Campbell said if the school tried to change the charter to admit boys or change governors’ powers, she would mobilise Old Girls to vote them down.
Helen Jefferies, 61, who studied at Roedean in the 1970s, said it was highly likely that any attempt to admit boys or change governors’ powers would be voted down by governors. “Normally at an AGM, 40 to 50 people turn up and if these items were on the agenda at least three times would attend,” she said.
Ms Smiley said: “It is too early to speculate what changes might be recommended”, but there were “no plans” to admit boys. Roedean was “proud to have been at the forefront of girls’ education for more than 135 years”.
Tessa Dahl, the author and former actress who is the daughter of Roald Dahl, and Rebecca Hall, an actress, producer, writer and director, are Old Girls.