Alumnae and staff gather at Yolande Paterson memorial

A memorial service for Miss Yolande Paterson, Headmistress 1973-1993, was held in Chapel at St Helen and St Katharine on 6 June. Attended by over 60 alumnae, former staff and current staff, we share below the tribute to her by the current Chair of Governors and alumna, Sara Benbow. 

A Tribute to Miss Yolande Paterson (1931-2026)  

by Sara Benbow (SHSK 1979-1986), Chair of Governors

How fitting it is that we have come together in Chapel to celebrate and honour the life, leadership, and enduring legacy of Miss Yolande Paterson, who served with such distinction as the Headmistress of St Helen and St Katharine for two decades between 1973 and 1993. For those of us who were pupils here during that time, Chapel and Old School Hall were the places where we most frequently saw Miss Paterson, conducting many of our daily acts of worship and providing an unmistakeably clear steer as to what was right, what was wrong, and exactly what was expected of us in all aspects of our lives.  

Aside from those fortunate few Sixth Form Geographers who came to know her a little better as an apparently highly-engaging and inspiring teacher, Miss Paterson was a distant, elevated and somewhat daunting presence to her students. We wouldn’t have presumed to think of her as a friend – she was very much the voice of authority, and a summons to her presence was the cause of trepidation in even the most well-behaved of girls. Not entirely having been one of those angels, I suspect I am not alone in having a nervous reaction to this day on entering any room painted purple…... 

However, looking back on the events of those years as an adult, and even more so since having had the privilege of joining the governing body and getting to grips with the infinitely complicated business of running a school like this, I have come to realise that Miss Paterson’s tenure at St Helen’s really was something of a masterclass in educational and strategic leadership of its time.  

If current waters are a touch choppy for the independent sector, so too were those through which Miss Paterson skilfully steered us in the 1970s and 1980s. Almost as soon as she took the helm, the Direct Grant was abolished, requiring St Helen’s along with many other such schools either to join the state-funded comprehensive system or to stand alone as a fully independent education provider.  

It is all well and good to look back on the decision which Miss Paterson and her governors took at that time from the wonderful situation in which St Helen’s finds itself now and to assume that decision was an obvious or an easy one. As the current Chair of Governors, I have a different word for it. Courageous. Courageous in the extreme. Had she not been brave enough to make that leap into the unknown at a time of immense economic pressure, conflict and uncertainty; had she taken instead the easier route of moving into the safety of the state sector, the School would not have continued to exist as we have known it over the decades which followed, and the lives of thousands of girls and young women (many of whom are now rather older women) would not have been enhanced by the multitude of things they learnt and experienced here. 

Towards the latter part of Miss Paterson’s time as Headmistress a different, but no less seismic challenge presented itself in the form of the abolition of O Levels and introduction of GCSEs in 1988, requiring wholescale amendment to traditional ways of teaching and marking. Whilst other institutions panicked and other heads wrote doom-laden letters to ministers and newspapers, Miss Paterson remained publicly positive and optimistic, supporting her staff with an unshakeable belief in their excellence and adaptability as they mastered the mammoth task of curriculum moderation. Her reward was a spectacular inaugural set of results where 400 out of 497 papers written by that year’s cohort of 16-year-old HelKats scored top marks.  

Nor was it only at O or GCSE Level that Miss Paterson had a significant positive impact on our academic reputation. Under her stewardship, numbers of leavers moving on to university and Oxbridge climbed steadily throughout the decades — a whole-school achievement which she proudly compared to the progress of a beautifully synchronized, successful rowing crew. 

Yet, as the School’s records clearly show, Miss Paterson fiercely believed that the pursuit of excellence should be neither narrowly academic nor homogenous in nature. "Each individual is encouraged to develop all her talents," she stated, "by a sensible mixture of academic work and time devoted to extra-curricular activities". 

Ever one to make deeds fit the words, Miss Paterson therefore oversaw a huge upsurge in the range of opportunities presented to her girls outside the classroom: 

In the Arts she made the inspired appointment of the (then ridiculously young) Andrew Tillett to lead and develop a music department, watching it grow to offer 350 lessons a week, send girls to national finals, and obtain scholarships to universities and music colleges whilst providing opportunities to everyone for participation at all levels and in increasingly varied genres.  

Drama, too, was significantly expanded from the occasional small internal event in the old Lecture Theatre into brilliant annual competitions and ambitious, polished productions of everything from Shakespeare to Sci-Fi via Gilbert & Sullivan and George Orwell’s Animal Farm. 

Displays of artwork (produced in two of the many “temporary” cabin classrooms which then littered the School grounds) also became part of our everyday lives, brightening up the walls of Old School Hall and inspiring even those of us with limited ability to seize the paints and create something. 

In Sport, Miss Paterson pushed for the reconfiguration of the estate to enable construction of the new Sports Hall and, with the benefit of the new facilities, athletic achievements soared. In 1988, for instance, the school fielded a record-breaking 244 sports teams, with our lacrosse teams dominant in tournaments at all age-levels and players representing England on international tours to Australia and America. Her vision and support for the sporting side of the School, not necessarily apparent to her teenaged pupils of the 1970s and 1980s, is absolutely clear now. The strong foundations which she laid have enabled successive leaders to continue developing the breadth and quality of St Helens’ offering to the extent that we now rank amongst the top schools in the country for sports. 

Miss Paterson was always keen to extend our community’s horizons beyond the School or Abingdon, Oxfordshire or even the UK. From prayers in Assembly and Chapel to debates in the Literary and Political Societies to global charitable enterprises—such as the whole school community making 700 teddy bears for Romania in 1991 or the (still frankly puzzling) efforts to which we all went in knitting T shirts for the starving Ethiopians in the early 1980s —she ensured that St Helens girls thought broadly about the world and particularly of others less fortunate than themselves. 

In public, Miss Paterson’s persona was strong, precise, and dignified. She could be seen as sharp and direct when an issue arose, sorting it out calmly, logically, and keeping anxieties to herself. She undoubtedly held the reins of discipline firmly and commanded the respect of all. 

But those who knew her best have provided memories of the warmer, jovial, and more relaxed side of her personality. It was to be found in the informal coffee mornings at Wantage House, or in her witty public speeches, where she more than once famously paraphrased the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland to describe the breakneck speed of educational changes. 

It seems that she deeply valued her professional relationships. She listened to the School Council—even when the girls took up her time to lobby for better salads, a warmer library, or the right to wear black shoes instead of brown. She knew every single girl and really seems to have been devoted to them. To us. As was written by one of her members of staff, “a girl could come out of her office with a smile rather than a scowl because the headmistress had said something nice to her rather than reprimand her”. I would add “as she had expected”, but the point is a very valid one. Everyone knew that a word of praise from Miss Paterson was not gained lightly, and it was therefore of immense value to the recipient, however hard they might try to maintain a veneer of cool insouciance. 

When Miss Paterson announced her retirement, it coincided with the completion of her greatest structural project: a magnificent new hall in which the whole School could gather and perform. Opened in October 1992, it was fittingly named the Yolande Paterson Hall—a permanent tribute to a headmistress whose 20 years had encompassed so much and whose efforts had set such fine foundations for St Helen’s to thrive and continue to develop into the next millennium. At her farewell concert in July 1993, the entire school did indeed gather in that very hall to give her a triumphant and unusually emotional musical send-off. 

At that celebration, Sir James Cobban unveiled Miss Paterson’s portrait and summarized her legacy perfectly, stating: “Her main aim was to make St Helen’s as good a school of its type as possible, and in this she triumphantly succeeded”. 

Miss Paterson did not just lead St Helen’s through those two decades; she challenged its ambitions, nurtured its community spirit, embedded its sense of comradeship, set it on course and shaped its modern soul. Her legacy lives on in the standards she demanded, the buildings she raised, and the lives of the thousands of women who found their voices and fulfilment under her watchful and loving, if slightly terrifying care. 

May she rest in peace.