Missionary head to visit Chch

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33253, 16 June 1973, Page 6

Missionary head to visit Chch

Britain’s first woman president of the Church Missionary Society will visit Christchurh early in August. Dame Diana Reader Harris was elected president of the society in 1969. A notable figure in British ■education, she has been headmistress of Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset for the last 21 years. Last year she was made a Dame Com- ■ mander of the British Empire for her services to education and the church. While in Christchurch she will address a meeting of the society at the Town Hall. She will speak on “Partnership in a Christian Mission to the World.” A meeting with the Christchurch Secondary Schools’ Principals’ Association has

also been arranged. Senior officers of the Department of Education have also been I invited to hear her discuss developments in sixth-form i education. Dame Diana Reader Harris’s New Zealand visit is being sponsored by the New Zealand Church Missionary ■Society. She has been invited to address a joint conference J of headmasters and headjmistresses in Melbourne, after which she will spend about a fortnight in New Zealand. Now 60, she was born in Hong Kong and became a pupil at the school she now heads when she was 12. She gained a first-class honours degree from London University, taught for some years in Toronto, and took up youth work in England in 1943. When she left the National Association of Girls’ Clubs as deputy general-secretary in 1949, it had developed its

work with mixed clubs lt is now the National Association of Youth Clubs. She has maintained her interest in the . association, and is now a j vice-president. Since her appointment as headmistress of her school in 1950, she has been actively involved in many spheres of education in Britain. A governor of the town’s grammar school and the secondary modern school —of which she is vice-chairman — she was a member of the Dorset Education Committee from 11952 to 1969. The Association of Headmistresses has been one of iher main interests, and she ! has served in many executive offices, including a term as president. Her services have been sought for many advisory committees, including those of the Ministry' of Education,

the Department of Employment and Productivity, and the Women’s Consultative Committee. She has also worked on advisory committees concerned with agricultural colleges and architectural education, and was a member of the Independent Television Authority for four years. Her many interests show a wide concern for the young. She has served on the council of the Outward Bound Trust and the committee of the organisation’s girls’ courses committee, of which she was chairman. For nine years she was on the council of the British National Youth Orchestra. In the course of her work she has travelled extensively, lecturing in the United States, visiting boarding schools in Russia, and representing the C.M.S. at the inauguration of the United! Church of North India.