We live in neo-liberal times, and we can see that the collaborative, collective, social justice values that the Fabians believe are important, are regularly challenged on every front. In education this is a bit like squaring a circle, for example school leadership teams regularly have to bid for contracts that are only ever awarded to the private sector, and yet those working in the public sector are never told that we can’t apply: this is how the education system is now funded – through competitive tender.

The numbers of women in STEM based careers remains at 14% and this statistic hasn’t shifted in 30 years. The Consumer Retail Director in a major global company was recently interviewed on this lack of generational change in the UK’s STEM figures, and she said that it was in part, at least, to do with the language that was used to bring larger groups of women in: it was ineffective and didn’t appeal to women. Terms such as Innovate; Change; Modify; these might be fine but (in similarity with the current language used by the DfE) the terms are often harsh and patriarchal. Creating the system disruption to create the innovation that is believed to be essential in neo-liberal terms. Re-brokering; Rigorous; Dissolution; these are not collaborative and collective terms, and they appear to put women off accessing alternative career paths, and – potentially – also put them off senior leadership roles in education.

According to Fuller’s 2015 research we had another 30 years in secondary education before men and women achieved parity in headship numbers. Yet the creation of MATs where the overwhelming numbers of leaders are men, has set this back tremendously, assuming that what we want is gender parity at the Executive Headship level too. (Let alone sector matching amounts in an arena in which women provide around 80% of the workforce). So, what’s to be done? Certainly not legislation for neo-liberal times that never appears to be the answer, so for now it’s empowerment, it’s getting the message out there and it’s trying to change the opportunities for our younger women from the bottom up, but when so many of our structures are opaque it’s about a collective show of agency, as individual agency alone cannot overcome the current dominant mantra.

Suggested ways forward for more girls into STEM:

· Wider access to STEM enrichment activities, at the moment funds exist (at least where targeted into disadvantaged areas), but the schools don’t have the capacity to set them up or deliver them further.

· Single sex STEM activities to build greater gender confidence.

Suggested ways forward for more women into Senior Leadership roles:

· All-female cohorts of NPQH, as have been developed recently by the collaboration between Ambition School Leadership and @WomenEd.

Fuller, K. (2015) Gender, Identity, and Educational Leadership, London:Bloomsbury.