By Mr Gardner, Senior Deputy Head

At the recent International Coalition of Girls’ Schools (ICGS) Educating Girls Symposium in Melbourne, Dr Mark Williams offered a powerful perspective on what makes girls’ schools such effective learning environments. His central message was both simple and compelling: if we want girls to thrive academically, we must first understand how their brains learn.

Neuroscience tells us that active learning, where students are thinking, discussing and applying ideas leads to deeper understanding and stronger long-term retention than passive approaches. In many ways, this aligns closely with what we already see in girls’ schools, where collaboration, participation and distributed leadership are often the norm. 

A key theme of the session was the importance of connection. Learning, Dr Williams argued, is fundamentally relational. When students feel connected to their teacher, they are more attentive, more motivated and better able to retain information. In contrast, when they feel anxious or judged, their attention is diverted and learning is diminished. 

This is particularly significant for girls. In mixed settings, greater self-consciousness, fear of negative evaluation and social comparison can place additional strain on attention and working memory. Girls’ schools can help reduce these pressures, allowing students to focus more fully on their learning.

Dr Williams distilled neuroscience into five key drivers of learning: connection, attention, engagement, error feedback and consolidation. These offer a helpful framework for classroom practice:

• Connection creates the conditions for learning
• Attention determines what enters memory
• Engagement ensures students are actively thinking
• Error feedback normalises mistakes as part of progress
• Consolidation helps knowledge to be retained and retrieved over time

Perhaps the most practical takeaway was his call to shift from performance-first to connection-first feedback. Before focusing on what a student has achieved or not achieved, we should first establish connection. Even a brief moment of attunement can reduce anxiety, increase motivation and improve the way feedback is received.

This is not about lowering expectations. Rather, it is about sequencing them more effectively. When girls feel seen and understood, they are more willing to take risks, respond to challenges and engage deeply with their learning.

At BGS, this resonates strongly with our commitment to ensuring that every girl feels known, supported and encouraged to participate fully. The neuroscience simply reinforces that these relational foundations are not an addition to academic learning – they are what make it possible.

Ultimately, Dr Williams’ message is a timely reminder that the most powerful strategies in education are often the most human. If there is one change we might all make, it is to begin with connection, because it is not the warm-up to learning, but the starting point from which everything else follows.