Haberdashers' Girls' School

Haberdashers' Girls' School — formerly Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls — was founded in 1875 under the endowment of Robert Aske, the same City of London Haberdasher whose seventeenth-century bequest also founded Haberdashers' Boys' School. The girls' school operates under the same Worshipful Company of Haberdashers governance as its brother school, and has moved alongside Haberdashers' Boys' through three Hertfordshire and Greater London relocations: the schools moved to their present Elstree campus in 1974, with the Girls' School at Aldenham Road and the Boys' School on an adjacent site. The two schools share a single Executive Principal (Gus Lock) and Chairman (Simon Cartmell) but separate Headmistresses and Headmasters.

Haberdashers' Girls' is a member of the GSA and ISI. The Headmistress is Hazel Bagworth-Mann. The school educates around 1,132 pupils aged 4-18 across an integrated Junior School (with houses Gillett, Gilliland, Harold, Millar, Powell and Sprules) and Senior School. A-Level performance places the school consistently in the top quintile of London girls' independent schools by Oxbridge offer numbers.

The Old Girls' alumni list is unusually strong across broadcasting, science, fashion and public service. Vanessa Feltz, the BBC Radio 2 presenter and television personality, was educated at Haberdashers' in the 1970s. The BBC Radio 4 newsreader Charlotte Green attended in the 1970s. In science, the school produced Florence Bell, who in the 1930s and 40s contributed important X-ray diffraction analysis of biological fibres that laid groundwork for the later DNA structural work of Watson, Crick, Franklin and Wilkins. The contemporary academic and arts world is represented by Margaret Bent, the medievalist musicologist and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; and Nica Burns OBE, the theatre producer behind the Nimax Theatres chain.

In politics and public service: Luciana Berger, the former MP for Liverpool Wavertree, who moved from Labour to Change UK and then to the Liberal Democrats; and Tamara Finkelstein, the senior civil servant who serves as Permanent Secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In fashion: Linda Bennett OBE, founder of the L. K. Bennett brand. In sport: the early Olympic competitor Florence Birchenough, who was a member of the first British female Olympic team in 1908. The school operates a substantial bursary programme via the Haberdashers' Aske Foundation.