On Tuesday 4th September, Year 7s strolled through the doors of Swakeleys School for Girls, eager to start a new academic year. Though unlike many years prior, an extra 60 pupils joined them. This was due to the single-sex school, based in Hillingdon, adding an extra two forms for the year group, which meant creating two brand new houses.
Like many other schools in the area, Swakeleys has several houses which each pupil as well as teacher, belongs to. Before September, they consisted of six influential women with a designated colour, such as orange for the Rosa Parks house and green for the Florence Nightingale house. However, due to long waiting lists of applications and a pristine school building recently opened, it was decided that two more women would represent another two forms.
In the academic year prior, students were asked to vote on who would represent the new house, which resulted in the decision of Diana Spencer representing light blue and Malala Yousafzai as pink. A current Year 11 of the school described this decision as, “a great idea, Malala was very influential at a young age and could be an inspiration to girls within the school”.
As the forms of MY (Malala Yousafzai) and DS (Diana Spencer) would only exist in Year 7, it was decided that house points accumulated by Year 7 forms would be counted separately to those in the rest of the school – avoiding a severe disadvantage in house competitions. So that leaves us anticipating, will a new house win?
