‘We shouldn’t mimic mediocrity’: Outgoing SCEGGS head defends single-sex schools

3 months ago 6

In 1995 Jenny Allum was appointed to be principal of SCEGGS Darlinghurst with much fanfare. At the time the Herald noted she had won a job that became available about once every quarter of a century.

Ahead of her retirement this week, Allum has been packing up her office, which, over 30 years, has been the scene of numerous tough conversations with students about family breakdowns, death and health issues, as well as consoling parents of daughters who, in her words, “went off the rails”.

SCEGGS principal Jenny Allum has taken aim at bureaucratic busy work in schools.

“There’s always been a range of parents, from those who are very hands-off to those who are very involved in a supportive way, to those who are very demanding in an unreasonable way, and I don’t think that’s changed very much,” she said.

Throughout her tenure, the fundamentals of good teaching have remained the same, Allum says.

But she notes some significant changes, including the rise of mental ill health of young people alongside a tendency of students to pathologise normal negative emotions or interactions, such as characterising simply unpleasant behaviour as bullying.

“We do worry about ourselves a lot. We can’t just be sad, we’ve got to be depressed,” she said.

“If you’re worried about the maths test coming up, that’s a good thing. That doesn’t mean you’re anxious. That means you want to do well in your maths test, and your maths test is important to you. That’s great.

“Everyone uses Doctor Google, and if you can’t concentrate in class, it’s got to be ADHD as opposed to being bored. Maybe you’re just distracted and you have to learn to concentrate a bit more.”

While she said ADHD diagnoses were accurate and warranted, she noted she was “not sure that every kid who is diagnosed as ADHD has ADHD”.

“There is a lot of over-diagnosis and over-prescription, which I think happens in our healthcare system.”

The rise of social media over the past decade has changed the landscape for adolescents, especially teenage girls as they seek attention for posting increasingly sexualised images.

“It does start to even, say, warp your behaviour in ways that is quite unusual,” Allum said. “And so you better have a good sense of yourself and not get swayed just by that response.”

In the face of those changes, Allum remains a strong advocate for single-sex schooling, so girls learn how to “fight back” when they’re spoken down to at university or in the workforce.

“I know there are some people who say, ‘well, it’s a co-ed world out there’, but I’m not sure it’s a great co-ed world out there. And we shouldn’t be just mimicking mediocrity. We should be striving for something,” she said.

“I really have loved being the head of a girls school, and I’m a strong supporter of having single-sex schools. I want SCEGGS girls to understand that they’re empowered and they’re strong, and they can fight for equality and justice and stand up for themselves.”

Allum became a teacher after gaining a science degree and subsequently obtaining a one-year diploma of education. Now prospective teachers with an unrelated bachelors degree must obtain a two-year master’s degree to enter the profession.

SCEGGS in Darlinghurst has had only five heads in its 130-year history.

“There should be other ways to attract people who have had careers in other areas and then want to come into teaching, and different ways that you can learn on the job in sort of an internship within the school, without going through all the hoops that NESA makes you go through,” she said.

But the problems facing the profession went beyond entry, from bureaucratic admin work to how they were treated by society.

“We are collecting information to demonstrate we are just teaching what you told us we have to teach.

“We do talk negatively about teachers a fair amount. And when we find something that’s wrong in society, we think that teachers can fix everything. So teachers are responsible for, you know, helping kids to understand road safety and financial literacy.”

She said the bureaucratic mindset within the education system that oversees creation of more rules in a bid to create safeguards made it tricky for schools trying to attract and employ teachers.

University of Sydney vice chancellor Mark Scott, who wrote the aforementioned article about Allum’s arrival at the school in the 1990s while working at the Herald and subsequently went on to lead the NSW Department of Education, praised Allum’s contribution to education.

“Jenny Allum has been a formidable leader not just in NSW education but in Australian education. She is a formidable intellect and formidable presence,” he said.

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