The Girls' Day School Trust

In 2028 Sheffield Girls’ will be 150 years old and we are proud to have been part of the GDST (Girls’ Day School Trust), since day one. It is the largest group of independent schools in the UK with over 4000 staff and 20,000 pupils and, as a charitable trust, it invests all of its income in its schools.

The GDST, a family of 26 schools putting girls at the heart of everything they do, has been a central force in the development of girls’ education since its inception in the nineteenth-century. The GDST’s mission is to help girls learn without limits, so that they go on to lead lives without limits. It’s purpose is to reach as many girls as possible,
supporting and empowering young women to achieve their full potential.

Never afraid to push boundaries and advocate for change, the GDST is a modern and progressive organisation with a huge team of experts from all walks of life ensuring the educational provision provided by each of its 26 schools is the very best it can be.

For Sheffield Girls’, the benefits of being part of such a strong and prestigious family of schools are myriad:

• Financial security and organisational stability
• A shared approach to best practice, innovation and collaboration, between hundreds of experts in girls’ education
• Inter-school competitions, challenges, performances and experiences
• Unique GDST programmes such as LEAD, delivered in partnership with the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the Diploma in Space Technology delivered in partnership with NASA
• Access to a huge alumnae network of over 75,000 professional women

Designing the Future of Girls’ Education – GDST Insights Report

As a global voice on the design and delivery of world class girls’ education, our GDST Insights Report, Designing the Future of Girls’ Education, forms part of our latest series of innovative research supporting the specific needs of girls, in all learning environments.

“Decades of independent research has shown that girls behave differently in the presence of boys, often to their own detriment. Co-ed educational environments create unintended constraints on girls’ academic risk taking, their assessment of their own abilities and their subject choices. All-girls schools show just how artificial those constraints are, and what can be achieved when they are removed. Our own research shows just how that difference is realised, and the contributory factors include not just what goes on in the classroom, and what options are made inviting and accessible in the curriculum; it extends to the whole ecology of a school. Our aim is to use our expertise in educating girls in dedicated settings, to identify those factors that might still be applied even in co-ed settings, in order to ensure that girls are no longer held up or held back from realising their potential, wherever they go to school.”
– Dr Kevin Stannard, Director of Innovation & Learning, GDST

The report showcases expert knowledge to provide parents and educators with the tools to understand how to enable girls to achieve their full potential in a world still characterised by inequalities and personal prejudices. The insights from the report’s contributors are focused on three core principles for educating girls to realise their ambitions: Classroom, Curriculum and Culture.