When your school is considering a new initiative, confronting a difficult challenge, or simply wondering whether there might be a better way to approach something, you don't always need to start from scratch.

Somewhere in the global girls’ school community, there is likely an educator or school leader who has wrestled with a similar question.

That was one of the central ideas to emerge from our latest Inside the ICGS Network conversation: the value of a global network isn't simply in knowing people around the world. It's in knowing when—and how—to draw on their experience.

Dr Sally James, Head of School at The Diocesan School for Girls in South Africa, and Kate Hadwen, Principal of Pymble Ladies’ College in Australia, shared how they have turned professional connections into practical resources for their schools.

As Sally put it:

Healthy collaboration builds great partnership. Through collaboration we can also build innovation and come up with new ideas and strategies that we need to take our girls’ school forward. For us as leaders, we need to lean on each other—it’s a learning job, and we’re so much stronger through one another.

Their experiences offer several ways to put that philosophy into practice.

Ask the Coalition Before You Start From Scratch

When Pymble Ladies’ College purchased a second campus for outdoor education, the school was entering unfamiliar territory—with questions about expansion, risk, cost, and operations.

Rather than navigate those questions alone, Kate connected with leaders at other girls’ schools that already operated second sites, including MLC and Lauriston.

The conversations weren't about finding a blueprint to copy. They gave Pymble access to people who understood the context and could challenge its thinking.

Kate described the value as being able to “ask the difficult questions that you know you want somebody on your side who’s going to give you a really honest appraisal of the situation.”

That approach can apply to almost any initiative.

Before developing a new programme or making a significant investment, consider asking: **Who in the ICGS network has already explored this? What might they tell us that we don't yet know to ask?**

Use Outside Perspectives to Find Your Blind Spots

Sometimes the greatest value of a global network comes precisely because another school doesn't share your context.

When Pymble was developing its student wellbeing framework, its team wanted to know what it might be overlooking because its thinking was so deeply situated within its Sydney context. Kate sent the framework to heads of girls’ schools in the United Kingdom for feedback and ultimately established cross-school teams to exchange perspectives.

The goal wasn't to find another school's answer. It was to expose Pymble's thinking to perspectives it wouldn't necessarily encounter internally.

This is a simple practice schools can replicate. The next time you're developing a strategy, framework, curriculum, programme, or policy, ask a colleague in another part of the world to look at it.

What do they notice that you don't? What assumptions are you making because of your own context? What question would they ask that your team hasn't?

Turn Travel Into Professional Learning

A school visit can provide a kind of learning that is difficult to replicate in a conference room.

While travelling through Australia, Sally made a point of visiting girls’ schools to understand how schools around the world were using their “spaces and places” to create environments particularly meaningful to girls.

What caught her attention wasn't necessarily something you'd find in a strategic plan. It could be the posters on a wall, the way a space was being used, or how a school approached wellbeing for students and staff.

That's an opportunity available to more members than might realize it.

If you're travelling internationally or regionally—or sending a group of colleagues to a conference or professional learning experience—contact ICGS. We can help connect you with member schools in the area so that a school visit or conversation can become part of the experience.

Build Connections Before You Need Them

Networks become particularly important when the questions facing a school are difficult.

Kate spoke about turning to colleagues for advice and wisdom when Pymble needed additional psychological support following a student death. It was an extraordinarily challenging moment for the school, and having trusted peers to lean on mattered.

Not every connection begins with a crisis or major strategic initiative. They can start much smaller: a conversation at an ICGS event, a virtual introduction, a Headways master class, a regional gathering, or an exchange between colleagues working in similar roles.

Over time, those relationships create something bigger: a network of problem solvers you can call on when you need another perspective.

Start With the Question You're Already Asking

Perhaps the easiest way to make more of your network is not to begin by asking, Who should I connect with? Begin with: What are we trying to figure out?

Participants in this Inside the ICGS Network session were already asking questions like:

• How are other girls’ schools addressing maths anxiety?
• What does meaningful service learning look like in a post-COVID environment increasingly focused on risk mitigation?
• How are schools building multidisciplinary, integrated curricula?
• How should girls’ schools approach AI across teaching and pastoral programs?

Those aren't questions any one school needs to answer alone.

Think about the initiatives currently on your school's agenda—the program you're developing, the challenge your team keeps returning to, or the idea you'd like someone outside your school to pressure-test.

Send it to ICGS. Tell us what you're working on and whose perspective would be useful. We can help you find members who may have experience, questions, or ideas to share.

And continue the conversation at an upcoming Inside the ICGS Network session. Each gathering is designed to make the global network a little smaller—and make it easier to turn connection into collaboration, learning, and action.

Because the collective wisdom of the ICGS community only becomes valuable when we use it.