Parents plot counter-strike at top girls’ schools

Picket lines, striking teachers egged on by a left-wing trade union, and children missing out on their education. No, not a chapter from a history of the Winter of Discontent, but rather scenes playing out on the streets of Britain in February 2022. It seems that the bad old days of the inner-city comprehensives in the 1970s are back but with a catch: now they’re playing out at some of the most elite girls’ schools in the country.

For Mr S hears that all is not well among the hard-pressed parents of children at the fee-paying Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST), a network of 23 independent schools in England and Wales. It educates about 20,000 girls aged from 3 to 18 in London, Birkenhead, Norwich, Newcastle and elsewhere. But now in its 150^th anniversary year, as parents prepared to help the group celebrate this auspicious occasion, the mood has soured considerably after the GDST came unstuck on that age-old issue of pensions.