Getting the LP Girls on Board

Girls on Board is a new initiative for Leighton Park although a well-established, award-winning approach championed by over 1,000 schools worldwide. The initiative helps girls, their parents and their teachers to understand the complexities and dynamics of girls’ friendships, empowering young women to solve their own friendship problems and helping them to recognise that they are usually the only ones who can.

Today’s session featured a number of our Sixth Form girls enacting some common friendship scenarios and the impact each situation might have on different areas of a girl’s life at home, at school and with friends. The audience comprised our Year 7 and 8 students who were actively engaged with discussion around the impact of choices and how things might have been diffused through alternative actions. Trust and transparency were seen as key to successful relationships.

Sally Saunders, Assistant Head (Pupil Personal Development), enthused “it starts from the premise that every single girl needs at least one friend to feel supported and valued.  The programme aims to give them the resilience and the skills to tackle complicated friendship issues and know what to do. There are some complexities around girls’ friendship issues and girls could be more empowered to spot some of those and deal with them independently.” Sally continued: “Now that we’ve had this launch event, in the future, in the event that anyone should feel isolated or ‘in the water’ we would bring the group back together and as a group we would come up with solutions to help. I hope it will give them skills that they find useful for the rest of their lives.”

Zoona (Year 7) commented, “I think it was interesting as it was nice to know that adults understand what we go through.”

Ayesha (Year 7) shared her thoughts that “Maybe you should try to understand and get hold of it first and sort it our yourself and if it is really bad, then you should tell a teacher. I found it useful and the actors were good.”

Charlotte (Year 7) added “I liked how it wasn’t just people giving a presentation but it actually had acting and stuff in it so it was more interactive.”

Nicky Hardy, Deputy Head (Pastoral) concluded: “By encouraging open discussions and mutual support, Girls on Board fosters an inclusive environment where girls learn to resolve conflicts and build stronger, healthier relationships. We are thrilled to be rolling out Girls on Board to Year 9 through Lower Sixth over the course of this term, extending the benefits of this excellent initiative across more year groups.”