The Girls' Schools Association (GSA) is a membership association for the heads of independent and state girls' schools in the United Kingdom. It is a constituent member of the Independent Schools Council (ISC), and works with the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL).
The GSA started life as the Association of Headmistresses â an organisation founded in 1874 by Dorothea Beale and Frances Buss, with the intention of improving access to education for girls. Buss was the founding president.
Over the next century, the AHM led professional discussion and debate about the leadership of girlsâ secondary schools and wider aspects of school-age education for girls in England and Wales. During the late 19th century, the AHM was a pioneering organisation arguing for the right of girls to a full curriculum of secondary education equivalent to that of boys. In these years it was hampered by the relative financial poverty of girlsâ education but this situation improved significantly after 1902, when local education authorities were empowered to create and fund girlsâ secondary schools on a large scale. By 1944, the principal of equal provision of secondary education for boys and girls was no longer in doubt and the three post-war decades saw continued expansion, with a range of girlsâ schools â fee-paying day, fee-paying boarding, state-funded selective and state-funded comprehensive â operating side-by-side.
As it approached its centenary year, the AHM recognised a total of five affiliated associations with the UK. At their respective annual general meetings in November 1973, two of these associations â the Association of Heads of Girlsâ Boarding Schools and the Association of Independent Direct Grant Schools â resolved to amalgamate in order to form a new âÂÂGirls School Association (Independent and Direct Grant)â under the presidency of Dorothy Dakin, Headmistress of The Red Maids' School, Bristol (1961-1981).
The aim of the new body was âÂÂto unify the independent and direct grant schools for girlsâÂÂ. At the first annual general meeting a year later, Dakin told GSA's inaugural members that it was âÂÂstill closely connected with its parent Association of Headmistressesâ but was also making connections with other independent school groupings: âÂÂthe boysâ schools (H.M.C. and I.A.P.S.) and governing bodiesâÂÂ.
In fact, the AHM was, itself, beginning merger discussions with the Headmastersâ Association (HMA), with the result that a unified secondary headteacher body came into being in January 1978. This was the Secondary Heads Association (SHA) and it was GSA policy from the start that all of its members should also be members of SHA.
The chief executive is Donna Stevens.