Leadership Likes: Mrs Bradshaw

If you look me up on our school database, you find a fresh-faced young woman with not so much as a wrinkle. Some say I haven’t changed (they are lying) but a certain more honest someone (you know who you are) describes it as false advertising! Lucky for me, the database seems wedded to my very first school photo and so, for over a decade, I have been frozen in time. My 10 years at Croydon High have – apparently – not aged me a day. At this time of year, our newsfeeds are full of reviews of the year. Best movies, most memorable moments, and our most played songs. So, for my final Leadership Likes, here is my 10 years at Croydon High: unwrapped.

I began at Croydon High as we said goodbye to the noughties. In 2010, no school had boxes to store children’s phones when they handed them in at registration. Why? Children didn’t have phones. 2010 was also the year a young Mrs Bradshaw tried her first iPhone. Bye bye Blackberry! That first year at Croydon High, 2010-11, saw me teaching a delight of a Year 4 class – I couldn’t believe my luck arriving at this school. Engaged and polite girls, the biggest classroom I had ever taught in, with huge display boards and so much natural light. And that was before the Junior School was refurbished.

In 2012, we celebrated Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee and hosted the Olympics. The controversy of the very expensive logo (which could have been matched or even bettered by school children) was soon forgotten when The Games opened. I took my own children to complete the mascot trail in London and gave up my seat to see Usain Bolt to my 8-year-old because it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. She is now 18 and says she doesn’t really remember going! 2012 found me working with the wonderful Mrs Troop in Year 5. We spent an idyllic week in Nettlecombe where the sun shone, the girls were so well behaved, and the only negative was Mrs Troop taking a picture of me every single time I sunbathed to prove she was working harder than me (which she almost certainly was). These girls are now 20 years old and at university. But, however successful they become, I hope they remember that a 30 something year old Mrs Bradshaw beat them all at ‘scream and run’!

At the end of 2015, world leaders reached a landmark agreement on climate action in Paris. In the same year, social media was exploding with the Ice Bucket Challenge where people tipped iced water over their heads and challenged others to do the same. 2015 was also my first year back at Croydon High as Head of Juniors. It was a fast-paced year and one I could not have got through without the amazing Junior staff. They stepped up to the plate and got behind each and every new idea I had, however crazy! One of my favourite outlandish ideas was our 2016 #ICouldBeAnEngineer day. I can still remember coming up with the name with Mrs Cook halfway up the dining room stairs. It was months in the planning – but what a great day. A highlight of my time as Head of Juniors. In 2017, we introduced Mrs Krishnamurthy as a specialist teacher of Computer Science; and the idea that later became Enterprise Technology was born. We also hosted our first Year 6 Enterprise Challenge in that year, which is still going strong five years on.

From the day I took over as Head of Juniors, I started campaigning for the refurbishment of the old Junior Hall. While many of my now sixth formers remember ‘the bridge’ fondly, it (and the accompanying 1970s gym equipment) needed to go. In 2018, we got the go ahead to start planning the new space. Mrs Raja and I could not have been more excited if we had been planning our own houses. Of course, she then did all the heavy lifting as I moved into Seniors before the mess started! Thank you Mrs Raja – the Holt Hall, Foyer and Enterprise Technology Room all look amazing.

2019 saw me say goodbye to the Junior School. Although I didn’t go far! And I left Juniors in the most capable of hands. Mrs Raja and I had shared a vision for Juniors in 2015 and we had achieved so much in 4 years. Of course, when she took over as Head of Juniors, and I became Head of Sixth Form, neither of us knew what was around the corner. 2020 is a year everyone will remember. And it affected all of us differently. While the Juniors were working out how to swap reading books remotely through car windows, I was instead dealing with a year group of girls who were watching their A levels being pulled from under them. The year of TAGs and then the year of CAGs were certainly not what we expected. But I am so proud of how the school navigated those two years. Our staff pulled together and embodied our mantra: ‘every girl every day’. Teachers learnt new ways of working overnight, our Heads of Department reimagined exams, our pastoral teams introduced online check-ins, our Sixth Form Team hosted Saturday Best Hat Google Meets, our caterers made meals for the elderly, and our marketing teams produced video content to keep the Croydon High community spirit alive. I could not have been more proud of the team effort or the resilience of our girls. I could also not have wished for a more proactive and pragmatic Senior Leadership Team to work in. There were many occasions where we spent long meetings making plans, only to discover that the news was reporting a change in policy from Number 10 – and we had to start again. And what we would have done without Dr Purvis’ ability to read 300-page documents through the night – I do not know.

The second half of 2021 was a slightly less chaotic affair. But it wasn’t totally without drama. The name Nigel became extinct. No parents deemed the name Nigel to be suitable for their pride and joy. But some 400 Nigels did meet for ‘Nige-fest’ in a pub to commiserate! 2022 saw the Nation and the World say goodbye to Queen Elizabeth II. And as a reminder of the circle of life, it also saw Princess Charlotte instruct her older brother – a future king – on when to bow. The future of strong women in our monarchy seems safe!

And now 2022 sees me say goodbye to Croydon High School. I will miss the remarkable girls and their supportive parents, I will miss the dedicated staff, and I will most certainly miss my rather misleading database photo.

Mrs Bradshaw

Deputy Head (Sixth Form and Operations)