Development Office, King Edward VI High School For Girls,
Edgbaston Park Road,
Birmingham B15 2UB
T 0121 415 2245
F 0121 415 2260
E oldeds@kehsmail.co.uk
KEHS strives to give young women the tools to critically evaluate the world around them, and to help create positive change throughout their lives. After the violent and shocking death of George Floyd, current pupils and alumnae took action for the BLM movement, with different people and groups across our community each helping their effort in their own ways.
On 16th June, we received a letter calling for KEHS to publicise its stance on the BLM movement. Here is an overview of all we have been doing.
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Dear Old Edwardians and Current Pupils,
Thank you for contacting us on 16th June 2020, calling for KEHS to take action and publicise its stance on the Black Lives Matter movement.
I am pleased to be able to reassure you that the School was swift to engage with the BLM movement in a variety of ways; in the week after half term which saw the violent and shocking death of George Floyd, Mrs Shore-Nye and I discussed our response as a School. In a short space of time, two Upper Fifth students had put together an assembly on BLM, a Lower Sixth student had organised a Breakfast group discussing articles about the movement and the student newspaper had pulled together an edition devoted entirely to BLM (which has been emailed to current students and is on the Old Edwardians part of the website). We have established an Action Group in the school community, inviting students, teachers and support staff to attend. Mrs Shore-Nye is coordinating this as I am retiring at the end of August. Following a preliminary meeting with three Upper Sixth students to establish useful terms of reference, the first meeting was held last week with over 50 participants. We were delighted with this response, and this level of commitment means that the subgroups can look at a whole range of different aspects of school life.
Beyond that, KEHS is an active contributor to the wider debate, working locally with the eleven schools comprising the Foundation of King Edward VI in Birmingham, and nationally with the Girls’ School Association. On 5th June, the Foundation published an open letter on behalf of all its schools. This reaffirms our commitment to continue to work to eradicate racism and to reflect the diversity of our schools and our city. The headteachers of all the Foundation schools together with student representatives are having regular meetings to coordinate their responses, to feed back ideas from their own internal working groups, and to share ideas for best practice.
There is always the potential to improve on our provision and we are actively seeking constructive suggestions from all parts of our community. We are conscious to avoid complacency at all costs, and seek to develop a programme of regular review and critical analysis of all we do, to combat discrimination in all its forms. Your suggestions will continue to help us to do this. I hope this letter will reach out to all those of you who signed the letter and reassure you that we are being proactive in our response and are fully committed to change.
Kind regards,
Ann Clark
Principal, King Edward VI High School for Girls.