Top school ‘to axe head boys and girls’... in case LGBT pupils get upset

IT has long been the dream of aspirational parents to have the ultimate accolade of head boy or head girl conferred upon their son or daughter.

But now, one of Scotland’s most traditional private schools is considering doing away with the titles in the name of gender equality – and replacing them with the neutral term of ‘school captain’.

Pupils at George Watson’s College in Edinburgh, whose roll call of former students includes High Court judges, political grandees and sporting heroes, are set to vote on the change later this month.

If they agree to the move, which has the backing of principal Melvyn Roffe, the new ‘gender non-specific’ designations will come into force at the start of the new school year in August.

It would bring George Watson’s into line with many state schools, who have already axed the terms in order to comply with gender equality laws.

Mr Roffe insisted yesterday that the idea was a response to the ‘quite rapidly developing awareness of gender issues’ among pupils and staff and that it was not a foregone conclusion that the titles would disappear.

He said: ‘What we are asking the school to vote on is whether to keep the status quo or to adopt the title of captain, so we would have two captains instead of head girl and head boy.

‘We are putting it out to pupils to tell us, the leadership of the school, what they feel about that. Would that be a welcome thing or would they actually prefer to retain the current titles?’

Mr Roffe added: ‘At present, we have a panel of six senior office bearers – the head boy and girl, their deputies and the two heads of sixth year.

‘As long as we have six office bearers, the question we are asking is does it matter of what gender these six happen to be?

‘At the same time, we do want to make sure that there is proper repcharges

‘Descend into tokenism ’

resentation of the genders in the school, so we wouldn’t want it to end up all boys or all girls.’

He added: ‘We want to get this right and we don’t want to descend into tokenism and just do it because everyone else is doing it.

‘It’s got to be something which is genuine and integral to the way in which the school operates, otherwise it will be counterproductive.’

Famous alumni of the school, which fees of around £12,000 a year, include former Lib Dem leader Lord Steel of Aikwood, former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Conservative MSP Liz Smith and BBC broadcaster Martha Kearney, as well as Olympic gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy and rugby legends Gavin and Scott Hastings.

According to its website, it has a ‘mix of pupils’ who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and an active LGBT+ discussion group.

‘We don’t want to unintentionally alienate any of our pupils from feeling that that process of representing the school is for them,’ said Mr Roffe.

The head boy of George Watson’s College was called school captain before the institution became coeducational on merging with George Watson’s Ladies College in 1974.

Voting will take place this month, but the result will not be announced until June – after the exam season.