School Gate blog: do girls need girls schools?

Girls are choosing careers in medicine because they love hospital dramas such as ER and Casualty, a leading head teacher has said.

The privately-educated pupils appear to be as influenced by television shows as school careers advice.

Jill Berry, the new president of the Girls’ Schools Association(GSA), said becoming a doctor was the top career choice among her pupils.

A decade ago many set their hearts on becoming vets, when Animal Hospital, presented by Rolf Harris, was a popular TV programme.

Ms Berry, head teacher at Dame Alice Harpur School in Bedford, also said she feared that girls were trying to achieve perfection in every area of their lives, and could end up striving to be “the perfect wife, the perfect mother and the perfect chief executive”.

She said: “They’ve got a very difficult balancing act ahead of them. I think we’re good at teaching them that from a very young age. A lot of girls will be keeping a lot of plates spinning.

“I do think more is demanded of women, as they are still the principal career givers.”

Ms Berry said more of her pupils were choosing medicine as a career than any other profession, although an increasing number had studied management or business in recent years.

Of the characters in TV shows such as Holby City and Scrubs, she said: “The girls see that as an exciting and dynamic way of life. They see it as making a difference to people’s lives. It gives them a sense sometimes of the pressures, responsibility and adrenaline.

“Such TV programmes can be good, as long as they give a realistic impression.”

Ms Berry was speaking at the launch of a new website, mydaughter.co.uk, which has been set up by the GSA. It gives advice on topics including bullying, homework, mood-swings, relationships and personal safety.

Tips for mothers include: “Don’t try to be your daughter’s best friend. She should have lots of friends but she only has one mother.

“Stop and think before you say ‘I know my daughter and she would never, ever lie to me’. Get real!”

For fathers it says: “Make sure you know your daughters’ friends’ names, but be aware that these will change regularly. Keep up to date.

“Never say anything about your daughter’s weight, either to her or in her hearing.”

A survey of 1,000 parents of girls aged 12 to 18, carried out on behalf of the GSA, found almost a third of parents spent less than 30 minutes a day alone with their daughter and that fathers, on average, felt they did not spend enough quality time talking to their daughters.

A quarter of parents rarely or never talked to their daughters about relationships and sex, and more than a quarter hardly ever broached the topic of drink and drugs. More than a third rarely or never spoke about puberty.

Respondents were more worried about the quality of their daughter’s education, than about drink, drugs, sex, bullying or eating disorders.

And parents said they felt family, friends and teachers had the greatest influence on their daughters, with celebrity magazines, ‘It’ Girls and WAGS (footballers’ wives) holding the least sway.

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