Celebrating One Year of OICB

Women are the world’s teachers. From the mother’s evidenced impact on early childhood emotional and linguistic development, and the accuracy of a mother’s educational level as a predictor of a child’s outcomes, to the predominance of women in the education workforce (76% of teachers in the UK are female, according to the Department for Education, 2024), women have traditionally carried the greatest share of educating our children. The archetype of the wise woman exists across cultural boundaries, perhaps most prominently in matrilineal societies. In the settings in which many of us teach, the figure of the influential grandmother is a common and impactful one.