As the new principal of all-boys' school Sandford Park in Dublin, Edith Byrne is sailing into unchartered territory. Kathryn Holmquist reports.

You know times have changed when the Old Boys choose a new girl to run one of the top schools in the country. Edith Byrne (39) was appointed principal of Sandford Park School in Ranelagh, Dublin, in March, making her one of the first women to become head of an all-boys' school in the Republic, if not Europe.

The loyalty that Old Boys feel for Sandford Park is such that in many families, generation after generation of young men have been educated there.

On the rows of varnished plaques inside the landmark Victorian building that is at the centre of the school, Byrne's name will soon be written in brass letters as the 13th head of school. On nearby plaques are the names of Old Boys such as Church of Ireland Bishop John Neill and Conor Cruise O'Brien. The Old Boys are one of the most positive aspects of Sandford Park, Byrne believes.

They have entrusted her with the management of an upcoming €3 million development of a new library and media centre, with areas for special needs and music and a modern canteen. The expanded facilities will allow the school to take about 260 students, an increase on its current population of 230.

"A lot is about to happen. This is an exciting time for the school," she says. "It's the Old Boys who can make all of this happen. Old Boys come from all over the world for the annual dinner - and that says a lot about a school," she says.

Sporty yet feminine and poised, Byrne's image runs counter to the fusty, pipe-smoking, Mr Chips impression we tend to have of boys' school heads. In fact, about 40 per cent of Sandford Park's staff are female. Her appointment is, she believes, a reflection of the progressive management of the school and the board of governors.

"They were looking for someone to maintain the traditions of Sandford Park and to be able to take on new challenges and change at the same time," she says.

As a member of the accreditation team for the Council of International Schools and the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Byrne has monitored whole school evaluations in France and Switzerland. She is interested in taking examples of best educational practise internationally and bringing them back to Sandford Park.

It would be fair to say that when Byrne accepted the post at Sandford Park a state of mourning set in at St Andrew's College up the road in Booterstown. As director of the International Division at St Andrew's, Byrne had developed the International Baccalaureate programme there from a handful of students to a two full forms and was prized for her management, as well as her pastoral skills.

Byrne's mentor at St Andrew's, Arthur Godsil, the current headmaster, says that her departure for a leadership position as head of a school was inevitable. "Vibrant" and "brilliant" are just some of the words he uses to describe her contribution to St Andrew's, where she taught for nearly 15 years.

Passionate about education, she herself describes her approach as "holistic and aimed at the whole student, rather than a narrow view that focuses solely on academic success". Boys need to be nurtured by teachers, parents and mentors to have a healthy confidence and self-esteem, which is why a school's "pastoral care" is as important as its academic standards, she says.

"I really do believe that most parents and teachers are interested in talking about the positive aspects of education, rather than the number of Leaving Cert students getting places in law, because these are not representative of the majority of students. Education is broader than achieving points in the Leaving and getting a place in university. Being a well adjusted individual is most important at the end of the day," she says.

As for those Leaving Cert scores, when pushed on the point Byrne will admit that Sandford is one of the top feeder schools for university in the country. Of the 30 students who sat the Leaving Cert at Sandford Park in June, the majority aspired to university and got places. Pushed further, Byrne will only say that the students achieved over the national average of 350 points.

"I would be critical of school league tables because they don't give a total picture of what a school is really like. It doesn't measure elements like pastoral care, success in sports, the arts and media," she says.

Boys need strong male role models and, Byrne points out, the deputy principal and an assistant principal are male.

She sees herself as the leader of a team: "You need to listen to and connect with people. The vision of Sandford Park is about more than just one person. A vision will emerge based on consultation and co-operation and strong input from parents, students and teachers". Research showing that boys do not achieve in exams to the same level as girls, indicates that we need to look at the way we teach boys, she says.

Exams measure one kind of intelligence, particularly rote learning, whereas boys enjoy more practical work. Although at the end of the day, it is boys who dominate in the professional world. Preparing boys to be useful contributors to society is a large part of what Sandford Park is about. For this reason, she wants the school to be increasingly "inclusive" and to look far beyond its campus to the wider world.

Byrne's world growing up was the narrow one of her home in Tivoli Terrace North in Dún Laoghaire. She was educated by the local Dominican nuns, where the range of courses was limited because they didn't view girls as university material. When they advised Byrne to become a typist, her father had different ideas. He propelled his daughter to university by convincing the Dominicans that such an aspiration was possible for a girl of Byrne's social class.

Shortly after her 17th birthday, in 1980, Byrne enrolled in Trinity College Dublin to study history and French. She was miserable and lasted two weeks. "I was very young and the nature of the course was that most of the other students were older and more mature than I was. So my father advised me to take a year off to travel." She went to Paris to work as an au pair for a fashion designer at Givenchy and soon found herself visiting Christina Onassis's island, Skorpios. The experience impressed upon the young Edith that the world of economic privilege could be extremely lonely for those at the top.

She could have stayed in that rarefied world forever, but after only a year of being part of the jet-set, Edith got a call from her father, who told her it was time to come home and go back to Trinity. This she did and, armed with a new love of modern Greek, went on to do a masters at TCD, in applied linguistics, which involved the methodology of teaching modern Greek and French.

She then spent a year in Greece in a flat with students from all over the world, studying at the University of Athens and living on a tin of tuna a day. She saw an entirely different view of Greece than she had on Skorpios.

And now, as she takes up a job of immense responsibility, she again is acclimatising herself to yet another world. As she stands at the stained glass windows of her new residence, the principal's apartment on the first floor of the Victorian house, she looks out over green playing fields, the Dublin mountains to the west and the roofs of Dublin 6 and 4 to the east.

"This is a different world - a big jump from my two-up two-down in Stoneybatter. Living here is a privilege for me," says Byrne.

Would her father have been proud? "I'd say he would have been," she says with a smile.