Name: Zoe
Secondary school: Henrietta Barnett School (Year 7 to Year 13)
University destination: University of Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College (History and German)
Only one other girl in my class was wearing trousers – everyone else had a skirt on!
The mad two-week period in Year 10 during which I was on German exchange for a week, before suffering a frantic transfer immediately upon arrival back in London to a coach which would take 23 hours of straight driving to deliver us to Prague, where our music ensembles were to play concerts for another week.
A lot of people might expect me to say that I wish boys had been allowed in for sixth form, if not from the very start, but I have no intentions of doing so. I found the ‘all-girls’ environment incredibly supportive and intimate. However, I do wish we had engaged a little with the local boys’ schools, with which we would only periodically debate.
I hear the alumni dinners are very fancy, but as I’m a new graduate, I haven’t had the privilege of attending one yet. I can only describe the less-fancy, but no less hallowed school tradition of Christmas Chanukah. This was a multicultural festive song composed by the ever-imitable Mr Chernick, sung annually at the carol concerts we put on for the local community in the lovely setting of St Jude’s Church.
First-class. The school did everything possible to see us excel academically.
No, but the Christmas carol concerts were always a highlight…
Winning the Classics University Challenge with some of my closest friends!
I think I’ll let the statistics speak for themselves…do visit the school website to marvel at our routinely 25 percent-plus acceptance rate by Oxbridge!
I am still in email contact with some of my favourite teachers, but equally, there are some teachers I’m glad to have left behind…
No – we don’t have detentions at all!
There is technically a school counsellor, but such is the nature of the student body that a lot of pastoral support is successfully provided through the informal, but nonetheless highly efficacious mechanism of friendship.
Get Into Oxbridge – just joking! I’d probably say Girls Supporting Girls.