When they enter the school, pupils are allocated to one of the five houses.  All members of one form are placed in the same house.  The houses are named after five influential and high-achieving women who have succeeded in areas traditionally dominated by men (Marie Curie, Amy Johnson, Florence Nightingale, Emily Pankhurst, Helen Sharman).

Competitions in areas such as music, drama and sport are held on an inter-form basis and ‘excellents’, awarded for good work and effort, are also totalled for each house and on an individual basis, leading to bronze, silver and gold awards.

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Marie Curie

Marie Sklodowska Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a physicist and chemist of Polish upbringing and subsequent French citizenship. She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity and the first person honoured with two Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry. She was also the first woman professor at the University of Paris. Her achievements include the creation of a theory of radioactivity, techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms (cancers) using radioactive isotopes.

Sixty years later, in 1995, in honour of their achievements, the remains of both were transferred to the Paris Panthéon. She became the first - and so far only - woman to be honoured in this way.

 

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Amy Johnson

Amy Johnson CBE, (1 July 1903 – 5 January 1941) was a pioneering English aviatrix. She was introduced to flying as a hobby, gaining a pilot's A Licence on 6 July 1929 at the London Aeroplane Club. In that same year, she became the first British woman to obtain a ground engineer's 'C' licence.
Johnson achieved worldwide recognition when, in 1930, she became the first woman to fly solo from Britain, to Australia. Flying her "Jason" Gipsy Moth, she left London on 5 May of that year and landed in Darwin, Australia on 24 May after flying 11,000 miles. Her aircraft for this flight can still be seen in the Science Museum in London. She received the Harmon Trophy as well as a CBE in recognition of this achievement.
Johnson flew in the Second World War as a part of the Air Transport Auxiliary where she died during a ferry flight.

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Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC (12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence during the Crimean War for her pioneering work in nursing, and was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night to tend injured soldiers. Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas's Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world.
In her later life, Nightingale made a comprehensive statistical study of sanitation in Indian rural life and was the leading figure in the introduction of improved medical care and public health service in India. In 1859 Nightingale was elected the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society, and she later became an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.

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Emmeline Pankhurst

Emmeline Pankhurst (15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was an English political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement, which helped women win the right to vote.
In 1898, Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union, an all-women suffrage advocacy organisation dedicated to "deeds, not words".  Pankhurst, her daughters, and other WSPU activists were sentenced to repeated prison sentences, where they staged hunger strikes to secure better conditions. In 1918 the Representation of the People Act granted votes to women over the age of 30. She died in 1928 and was commemorated two years later with a statue in Victoria Tower Gardens.
In 1999, Time Magazine named Pankhurst as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating: "She shaped an idea of women for our time; she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back".

 

 

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Helen Sharman

Helen Patricia Sharman, OBE (born 30 May 1963), is a British chemist. She was the first Briton in space, visiting the Mir space station aboard Soyuz TM-12 in 1991.
She received a B.Sc. in Chemistry at the University of Sheffield in 1984 and a Ph.D. from Birkbeck, University of London. She worked as an engineer for GEC in London and later as a chemist for Mars Incorporated, working with flavourant properties of chocolate.
Sharman was selected to travel in space on 25 November 1989, beating 13,000 applicants, after responding to a radio advertisement asking for applicants to be the first British astronaut.  Sharman was just 27 years and 11 months old when she went into space and is, as of 2007, the fifth youngest of the 455 individuals (90 percent men) who have flown in space.