Gail Thomson, Executive Principal of the Diocesan School For Girls, an Independent (Private) School in Auckland, New Zealand, spent last Wednesday in Trinidad, as a guest of Pat Ruddell, principal of Bishop Anstey High School.
Principal for ten years, Thomson has for the last three years been the first appointee to the newly created post of Executive Principal, which gives her, together with the Board, the responsibility for determining the Vision of the school. While her contemporary, the Academic Principal, implements and monitors that vision for the school.
Says Thomson, who is also chairperson of the Principals of Independent Schools in New Zealand: "With the school's centennial year coming up, from November 2003 to June 2004, the new post was created to give me time to work to get the history of the school together and attend to what is a huge fund raising effort." Other schools have since followed this method of "power sharing" by principals. Research on the centennial history of the Diocesan School led to Thomson's current world trip "so that I could make contact with schools who have had interaction with our school, particularly in the early days."
Hence her visit to Trinidad and Bishop Anstey High School. "The late Dorothy Shrewsbury was a former Principal of our school, and of Bishop Anstey. I knew her well and she always talked of Bishop Anstey High School in Trinidad and how much she enjoyed her time here before coming to New Zealand." Miss Shrewsbury passed away at age 95 on March 9, 2001, in Auckland.
"I wanted to make contact and see what interaction there could be between the two schools" and so Trinidad was the fourth stop on an itinerary which started with four cities in Australia, the Diocesan School in Hong Kong, seven schools in Britain, continued to Canada last Wednesday morning where she will attend the Independent Schools Conference in Whistler, British Columbia, and ends with a visit to Punohoi School in Hawaii.
Born in Australia, Thomson, who is married with three adult children, has lived in New Zealand for a very long time. She taught Biology but gave it up to manage the Diocesan School of 1,500 girls. A school which she says is "based on the same principles as here at Bishop Anstey. Our school was also founded by a Bishop who came there from England, Bishop Neligan. Also very similar to here, our first principal came from England, like your Madame Stephens."
However, it is obvious that modernisation has come faster to her school than to BAHS, since she says: "A lot of the buildings have been modernised and right now we are building a huge one equivalent to 70 classrooms which is the Centennial Building."
Unlike BAHS, the Diocesan School continues to be a private one with school fees of about $2,200 N.Z. per term ($3.2 to the British pound), and does still have boarders, through a group of old girls who got together and re-established boarding facilities across the road from the school.
School leaving examinations are the New Zealand School Certificate and the Bursary which is the equivalent of our A levels. The student body is multi cultural, some come from overseas which include Asians, there are some Maori students, but it is predominantly caucasian.
Although a very strong school, academically, the Executive Principal said "we are also very strong in music, sport (especially field hockey and netball) and drama, The school is a religious one, and regardless of religion students must attend chapel three times per week. "We are an Anglican School welcoming of all faiths, with two chaplains, and Religious Education is part of the curriculum."
Thomson finds: "It is refreshing to look at what is happening in education in other parts of the world. It enables you to evaluate your own system and to bring back new ideas that you have found from other schools as you travel around."
"We all face the same challenges and everyone is looking at the examination systems, and crowded curriculum which makes for too much learning and not enough time for evaluating and research. Because of technology there is greater awareness of the need for values in some form."
Lunch at Kapok Restaurant was attended by Ruddell, and a small group of Hilarians led by Judy Chang, chairman of the Board, who all shared memories with Gail Thomson, of the late Dorothy Shrewsbury, the second Principal of Bishop Anstey High School (1938-1950).