High Days and Holy Days (St Paul’s School for Girls)

St. Paul’s School for Girls first opened its doors in 1908. To mark one hundred years of Catholic education for girls at Vernon Road, Edgbaston, a history has been produced from the collected memories of generations of pupils and staff.

These range from prizewinning Choirs and Candlemas processions to the Canteen and chocolate concrete, sloping hockey pitches to state of the art developments in Maths and Computing, boaters to barrage balloons on the playing field, and from panamas to plays and pilgrimages.

Through them all runs the recollection of teenage energy and high spirits, interwoven with a deeper sense of the mission of the Sisters of Charity of St. Paul who founded the School in 1908; a record indeed of high days and holy days!

The author, Jean Simpson, has been privileged to be part of the last thirty-five years or so, first as Head of English, then Senior Teacher (Pastoral) and latterly as a school governor. Despite her birth and upbringing in Scotland, in a rather different education system, she feels sufficiently at home in Vernon Road to have taken on the post of chronicler, an exciting way to share in the Centenary celebrations and to feel part of the very large family that is St. Paul’s.