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Principal's Blog

Radnor House parents receive a Weekly Bulletin of news information, highlights of achievements and details of forthcoming events, as well as additional communications from other departments and individuals as necessary.

Our Principal, Darryl Wideman, also writes a regular blog to share his thoughts about education and the world with a wider audience, which you can read below.

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  • Looking to the Future

    It is always too easy to let the urgent get in the way of the important, to expend so much energy on the day-to-day dramas that there is not enough left in the tank to focus on what really matters, particularly in terms of planning for the future.  A cynical view might be to say that it is easy...
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  • The Power of Imagination

    The festive season, for children of all ages, is a time when imagination is more important than knowledge, which are the exact words that Albert Einstein used when he tried to explain how he was able to solve so many problems – or maybe he was just thinking about Christmas.  I do enjoy a...
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  • What If

    There is something about eclectic knowledge that I find increasingly fascinating as I get older.  It seems highly likely that almost all of it will be of no use whatsoever to me – rather like everything I learned for my O Level chemistry exam in 1981 – but the thing about knowledge...
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  • An Extraordinary Scottish Garden (Part Two)

    Last week’s blog may not have ended on the most thrilling of cliffhangers, but I was conscious that I was well beyond my notional word limit and I had yet to explain three more pictures that I took at a memorial garden in Kelso during our trip to Scotland at half term.  It is not usually...
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  • An Extraordinary Scottish Garden (Part One)

    Before I started the formal part of last week’s Remembrance Day assemblies, I showed the pupils a few photographs, which were in effect part of my collection of holiday snaps from half term.  We had decided not to risk having to pay hundreds of pounds in Covid test costs in order to go ab...
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  • Taking A Stand

    Our Remembrance Day assemblies this week gave us the chance to come together as a school community and focus on the sacrifice of others.  The last group of pupils from the school who were able to visit the battlefields of the First World War were then in Year 9 and are now in the Lower Sixth, w...
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  • The Value of Values

    In my assemblies this week, I have been talking to the pupils in more detail about our Values Wheel and why I believe it is so important.  The framed posters of the wheel now adorn pretty much every spare surface in the school, but I wanted to emphasise to the children the reasons why we did th...
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  • There Are Better Ways To Do This

    Of all the books I read over the summer break, I find myself coming back repeatedly to Rutger Bregman’s ‘Utopia for Realists’.  I have already highlighted his thoughts about education, most notably that we need to teach children values ahead of skills.  No one knows for s...
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  • Early Thoughts from the Hall

    We had the opportunity last weekend to show over thirty colleagues from Radnor House the new site at Kneller Hall, which has consequently triggered much excitement and discussion, all of which has gone way beyond the more obvious motives behind a visit, such as a grab for the office with the best vi...
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  • Nothing New Under the Sun

    My favourite historian at the moment is Dan Jones, who writes with commendable clarity about even the most complicated topics.  In the summer, which already feels a long time ago, I read his book about the Wars of the Roses, which was a gripping account of the turbulence of the fifteenth centur...
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  • Be Curious, Not Judgemental

    I was delighted to see that the Apple TV programme ‘Ted Lasso’ did so well at the Emmy Awards on Sunday.  While I thoroughly enjoy ‘The Crown’, and I am not remotely surprised by its continuing success and consequent awards, ‘Ted Lasso’ offers something a lit...
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  • In Case You Missed It

    It has been good this week to get back into more usual routines where possible, in my case by seeing all the pupils in their assembly time.  During the height of ‘bubbling’, it took eight different visits to get round to see everyone, so it was a lot easier to be able to cover the v...
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