Boys should not be told to 'man up' because they are just as sensitive as girls, leading headteacher says

Boys should not be told to “man up” because they are just as sensitive as girls and need to talk about their feelings, the outgoing headteacher of a leading boys school has said.  

Sarah Fletcher, who is head of City of London School for boys said that people often make the mistake of assuming young men are “a lot more robust” than they actually are.

“There isn’t a huge difference in the sort of issues boys and girls are concerned about. There are different manifestations, such as how they view body image. For boys there is an issue of masculinity and the expectation on them as men,” she told The London Evening Standard.  

“For women it’s different but the same. Anxieties and feelings of inadequacy and lack of self-worth are common threads and huge concerns.”  

“People in the past assumed boys are a lot more robust and will get through it all and man up and it will all be fine. That’s very far from the truth. What they really need is to be able to talk about it.”  

City of London School for boys, whose alumni include Peter Higgs, the Nobel-prize winning physicist who predicted the “God Particle” and Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe, has a feminist society and an LGBT society.

Mrs Fletcher is leaving the £16,000-a-year school to become head of St Paul’s Girls’ School in September.  

During her three years at City of London School, where she was the first ever female headteacher, Mrs Fletcher overhauled the pastoral system, created more offices where boys can talk to their tutors about problems, and increased counselling services from three days a week to five.

“I am very keen on the connection between wellbeing and academic happiness,” she said. “You can’t succeed academically if you are feeling miserable.”

She added: “One of the things some parents said is having a woman as a head produced a softer feel to the school that ‘permissioned’ the boys to talk.”