The Head Mistress of The Lady Eleanor Holles School is Mrs Gillian Low. Mrs Low was born in Wales, but grew up in Stanmore, in North London, where she was educated at a state primary school before gaining a free 11+ place at The North London Collegiate School in Edgware under the direct grant scheme. She went on from there, with an Open Scholarship, to read English at Somerville College, Oxford. After two years as a management trainee with Courtaulds, she decided to follow a career in teaching, and worked in Reggio di Calabria in Southern Italy for a year, teaching English as a foreign language, before taking her Post-Graduate Certificate of Education as a member of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Mrs Gillian Low, the Head Mistress, with some Sixth Formers

After gaining a Distinction in her PGCE, she took a series of increasingly senior teaching posts in comprehensive schools in Sussex and Middlesex, before becoming Deputy Headmistress of The Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith in 1994. In 1998 she was appointed Headmistress of Francis Holland School, Clarence Gate, in North London, a position she held for six years before moving to take up her current post at The Lady Eleanor Holles School in 2004.

She is President ofthe Girls' Schools Association and a member of the HMC/GSA Universities Committee. She is an Inspector of independent schools with the Independent Schools Inspectorate. Mrs Low sits on the committee of the Independent Schools Travel Association, and is the GSA representative on the Council of the International Confederation of Principals.

She is currently a governor of Queen's College, Harley Street. In addition, she has been a governor of Queenswood School in Hertfordshire, the preparatory school Sarum Hall, in Hampstead, and also of The Moat School in Fulham, which specialises in educating children with severe specific learning difficulties, and where she chaired the Education Committee.

Mrs Low has three children: a son of 25 and daughters of 22 and 19.