Girls (Educational Development)

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend has an excellent point. As female MPs, we are role models. To become an MP, someone has to be one in 100,000 people, and there are so few of us here, which relates to the cycle of learning that she has discussed. Knowledge from one generation can be passed to the next.

I was impressed by how openly and honestly the 100 successful women that I have mentioned talked about confidence, the need to develop it and how important it was for them in achieving in life. They compared confidence to a muscle that needed to be worked out through repetition of small, ever-increasing achievements. From those accomplishments, they developed a mental power—a power based on ability, achievement and a track record, further enabling them to strive for success.

Confidence can be difficult to describe. Helen Fraser, chief executive of the Girls’ Day School Trust groups of schools, past managing director of Penguin Books and two-time winner of “Publisher of the Year”, explained it as follows:

“There are many interrelated aspects to confidence, but there are two I would highlight as particularly important for girls, and which schools can help girls develop. The first is having the confidence to take risks, to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’. Schools can nurture this by encouraging girls to take small risks—to stand up in front of a crowd and make a speech”—

like I am doing today—

to direct and produce plays, to take part in debates, to take on challenges like the Duke of Edinburgh’s award. These kinds of experiences make girls much more confident about risk, and risk is absolutely essential in working life.”

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

rose—

[Esther McVey]

I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant).

[Pauline Latham]

My hon. Friend says that confidence can be difficult to describe, but we know exactly what it is when we see it. Does she agree that girls often do much better in a single-sex environment in schools, even if it is only in a single-sex class in a co-educational comprehensive? They are not having to live up to a stereotype in front of their colleagues and friends, the boys—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that interventions should be short.

[Pauline Latham]

Thank you, Mrs Main. Does my hon. Friend agree that girls do much better if they are not threatened by apparently more confident boys?

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend raises a point about girls being taught in a single-sex environment. Obviously, parents know best whether they want their children to be taught in single-sex environments. Whether there is stereotyping, whether girls are living up to stereotypes and whether they have the ability to speak freely within their peer groups can affect their confidence.