How many international schools are led by women?

Natasha Hilton, vice principal and head of primary at Park House English School in Qatar and a strategic lead for WomenEd, asked ChatGPT for a picture of an international school principal and got an image of a white man in a suit.

And that’s how it feels on the ground, she says. Leadership in the international school sector still feels “male heavy”.

It’s a sentiment many would agree with - but is it actually accurate?

In an effort to find out more about the reality of female leadership in the international sector, Tes requested data from 13 different organisations and companies representing thousands of schools for the gender of principals in their groups.

The results (see the table, below) show a mixed picture across different organisations and suggest some potentially unexpected positives, but there is clearly still more work to be done - with the proportion of female principals in some organisations sitting at fewer than a third (28 per cent) but in others hitting over 60 per cent.

It’s clear from this that many of the member associations have a lower proportion of female leaders - something that Dr Tristan Bunnell, an academic based at the University of Bath who had a paper published in 2024 entitled Exploring the ‘White men’ dominance of senior leaders in premium international schools, says is not surprising.

He reasons this is because parents at British international schools - particularly those in Asia with an emerging middle class - “probably expect to find a British-born male as head”. This, he warns, “will hold back any progress towards more female leaders”.

Tackling the gender gap

The organisations themselves, though, are aware of the imbalance and working to counter it.

John Gwyn Jones, chief executive of the Federation of British International Schools in Asia (Fobisia), says the organisation “fully supports the importance of achieving the right gender balance in leadership” and notes that “female representation in leadership across our community has increased steadily” - with additional data it shared showing that in 2019-20 just 15 per cent of its member schools were led by a woman.

Gwyn Jones adds that Fobisia will continue to “strongly encourage schools to consider a balanced and inclusive field of candidates” - although he also points out, “Fobisia does not appoint school leaders”.

Nalini Cook, chief operating officer at British Schools in the Middle East (BSME), says that, with just over a third of its schools run by a female principal (36 per cent), the organisation exceeds “regional and local averages and even regional benchmarks for female leadership”.

However, she acknowledges that BSME schools are “still catching up with the demographics of international teaching staff, where more than 60 per cent of teachers are typically female”, and adds that the body will continue to support its schools “to overcome common barriers preventing women from entering leadership, such as by checking for affinity bias, creating clear career pathways, mentoring and offering flexible working”.

Adrian Massam, president of the National Association of British Schools in Spain (NABSS), meanwhile, puts its relatively healthy proportion of female leaders down, in part at least, to the emphasis on “equal opportunities and equal rights” in Spain - suggesting that regions where there is “more prejudice and bias” could put women off leadership.

“Part of the reason why we have a more balanced proportion than other regions will come from the nature of other regions, as opposed to the nature of NABSS,” he says.

In terms of the international school groups, the figures show that in six of the seven, more than half of schools are led by female principals - with the lowest figure still a reasonably strong 42 per cent.

Bunnell says this is likely due to the fact that “for-profit groupings are more aware of their public image and more diverse”.

Cognita, for instance, tells Tes that it takes “a deliberate approach to supporting women’s progression” through its “annual talent management process, which ensures internal candidates are consistently considered for promotion”.

It says this “helps identify high-potential female talent early and provides targeted support and development to enable continued career development within the organisation”.

Nord Anglia also emphasises its “commitment to ‘growing our own’ talent” and notes that while it currently has the lowest proportion of schools run by a female principal, this figure has doubled from 21 per cent in 2019 to 42 per cent today.

Dukes Education expects its already healthy proportion of female principals to grow. Claire Little, director of people in Europe, says, for instance, that 83 per cent of the cohort on its senior leadership programme this year are female.

Mentoring opportunities

Meanwhile, organisations like WomenEd and WISE (Women in International Schools’ Empowerment) are also working to provide more support, networking and mentoring opportunities for women to find leadership roles.

WomenEd has networks across the UK but is a global organisation with a presence in many regions, including the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Portugal, Australia and Malaysia.

Hilton says for her personally, being part of this group - and having “loads of people around you, supporting you” - has been “really powerful”, especially because working internationally, away from family and friends, can be “quite an isolating experience”.

WISE, meanwhile, started as a mentorship programme but now has set its sights on “systemic change”.

Despite these efforts to empower women, many whom Tes spoke with lament the fact that leadership roles are often dependent on personal “networks”, “visibility”, “sponsorship” and “shoulder taps”.

For example, Hilton says she frequently hears tales of women struggling to advance - often due to some of the more “old school” recruiting processes.

“There are still situations where people are giving their friends a job,” she says. “There are still situations where it’s ‘I’ve spoken to that person loads of times so it’s really easy for me to see if they want a position’ as opposed to going through it fairly and equitably.”

Joanna Povall, principal of Wales International School in Abu Dhabi, who was named Tes International School Principal of the Year in 2024, acknowledges that there is “a bit of an old boys’ network” that can be hard to break into.

However, her advice to aspiring female leaders is not to shun this reality but lean into it by “making yourself visible” through social media platforms like LinkedIn but also by engaging with opportunities in wider networks.

“If your school is a member of BSME or Fobisia or COBIS, make yourself visible. Take your kids to activities, join in - if there’s a competition, go along.”

She also says lots of international schools use recruitment agencies for leadership posts, so you “need to be on their books”.

Povall does warn, however, that being a principal - which is a role she loves - is “a very full-on job”.

She says her “wonderful” husband enabled her to pursue her career, taking on the bulk of the domestic duties, including responsibility for their two children, while she worked.

Support for leaders who are parents

Many are not so lucky, and this is a reality Katie Tomlinson, co-founder and co-chair of WISE and head of primary and deputy head of school at The British School Manila, believes is still holding back too many leaders.

“Even though we’ve made some headway, I don’t think the headway has been made in terms of the systems. The systems are still failing women.”

For example, she says, part-time leadership positions are not common - something that would often be helpful for female leaders who have parental responsibilities - while flexible working, favourable maternity packages or menopause policies are a rarity.

“We’ve not done anything to put any rails or guards up for them to make sure they are supported,” Tomlinson adds.

She acknowledges that there is a clear reason why this may be so: “This stuff takes money.”

“If you’re going to start enhancing your maternity leave, the pay and the return-to-work structures, you are going to start dipping into profits in a profit-making school,” she says.

‘I don’t think the headway has been made in terms of the systems - the systems are still failing women’

However, the growth of large international school groups could help to alter this, says Morag McCrorie, the principal of Nexus International School Malaysia, who is exploring the experience of women in senior leadership in international schools for her doctorate.

According to ISC Research, based on data for 15,075 international schools, 38 per cent are now part of a school group, with the remaining 62 per cent individual family-owned or sole-owned schools.

Looking ahead, ISC Research predicts, 56 per cent of schools opening in the next four years will be part of a group.

McCrorie says: “If some of the bigger groups decided to be very deliberate about looking to diversify, then that really could have an impact.”

Looking at our data above from the school groups, it appears this may already be happening - and it’s something Liz Lamb, Nord Anglia’s regional managing director for the Middle East, says she is actively looking to improve in her region, too.

She has set the principals in the nine Nord Anglia schools she oversees the challenge of identifying four people whom they can nurture for leadership.

They have been told, she says, to look “beyond the obvious” in terms of personality - they should not just pay attention to the “noisy and vocal and confident people” - but also take into account native language and gender.

Encouraging women to apply

Lamb says this is important because “women respond better to invitational leadership” and often need to be encouraged to apply for promotion by a mentor or colleague - something she says was the case for every role she went for except her current position.

“I didn’t recognise [leadership] in myself and I needed somebody else to say, ‘You would be a good head. Why don’t you apply?’”

She believes many women often fail to realise they could apply for a leadership job because they don’t believe they have enough expertise.

“If you are a secondary specialist making the leap to principal, where you’re also trying to manage early years teachers, of course, you’re going to be out of your comfort zone for a while but it’s important to remind yourself nobody has the complete package.”

McCrorie also raises this issue, saying that there is evidence that “women will only apply for the job if they have the majority or all of the job description, and men don’t do that” - something she has seen recently when 75 per cent of applications for a senior post came from men.

Lamb says this could be because women sometimes think the principal role is “going to be harder than it actually is”.

“It’s not a question of taking on more work when you are a principal, it’s a question of working out how to triage what you need to deal with and what you need to delegate to somebody else, and what you just need to draw a line under,” she says.

“You don’t need to be there until midnight doing that every single day to be a good principal. Sometimes quite the opposite. A well-rested person who can make a happy, smiley environment is sometimes better than somebody doing tasks until midnight.”

McCrorie’s research, meanwhile, suggests that many women don’t apply because they perceive the role of principal to be “unappealing”, with many of her interviewees seeing it as more about politics, governance and marketing - and not about classroom practice and pedagogy.

But McCrorie’s personal view is that being principal is “a great job” and “a great way to shape a school and really influence young people and have a positive impact”, and that women need to be more willing to put themselves forward to help drive more gender balance.

Povall echoes this, urging women to “be the change you want to see”; many girls at Wales International School now want to be school principals, having seen her in that role, she says.

These are all issues that Ruby Fiddes, assistant headteacher, primary at GEMS Founders School - Al Mizhar, found when she interviewed several female leaders about their experience of leadership, as you can read here.

Perception of male bias

However, McCrorie says there is another reason why many potential female leaders don’t apply, which is perhaps the most dispiriting one of all - they believe school boards only want to appoint a white man.

For example, she found that roughly two-thirds of the women she interviewed - approximately 30 out of 50 women - thought that boards preferred men for head-of-school posts, with the exception of primary.

“In the interviews, I said, ‘Why do you think that?’ and they said, ‘Well, it’s just what I see - I see so many men in these roles. You feel like they must be preferred because it seems more of them get these jobs.’”

This chimes with Bunnell’s 2024 paper focused on 247 international schools, which found that only 36 per cent were led by women.

The paper reports that there is “a tendency to recruit white men as senior leaders...due to perceived parental preference or the notion that the role is best suited to that type of person”.

Hilton recognises this, too: “In some of the countries there’s almost this historical attitude of ‘What do our parents in our international private schools see as a leader? What does that look like for them? And are we making sure we fit that?’”

“I’m not saying hire someone to tick a box, but be prepared to say to parents, ‘Well, actually, this is the best candidate for this role.’”

Colin Bell, chief executive at the Council of British International Schools, agrees that schools must be brave - but suggests that while there is “still work to do”, the dominance of “white men in grey suits” is waning.

For instance, he cites the appointment of Kate Ingamells-Bland as the first female head at The Grange School in Chile in its almost 100-year history as an example of schools willing to do things differently.

Others point to Angelina Tee, who was appointed president at six-school Taylor’s Schools group, becoming the first female CEO of a regional K-12 schools group in South-East Asia - something Tee herself remarked upon in a post on LinkedIn.

“This milestone is personally meaningful to me as a mother of three daughters, and as a woman who believes in the importance of creating pathways for others to rise,” she wrote.

“Breaking the glass ceiling is not about being the first, it’s about ensuring that many more can follow.”

Povall, meanwhile, says there has been “real change” over the past five years in the UAE.

“People make a bit of an assumption about the Middle East and how it’s not a great place for women but that’s not true at all. The minister for education is a woman, and the respect I’ve had from our parents is phenomenal.

“Our school is 91 per cent Emirati and, culturally, I think I’m seen as the mother of the school.”

Clearly, then, there are positive signs and the sector is working hard to engage on the issue - the willingness of the organisations and companies to share their data with Tes speaks to that.

However, there is also still more to do. For Tomlinson, the key thing schools need to think about if they wish to further improve the situation is clear: “If women are not applying for posts in your school, you need to ask yourself ‘why?’”