Name Ralph Townsend | Role Headmaster | |
Education University of Western Australia, Scotch College, Perth | ||
Ralph Douglas Townsend (born 13 December 1951, in Nedlands, West Australia) is a retired teacher. He was Headmaster of Winchester College from 2005 until his retirement in 2016. He was previously Headmaster of Oundle School and before that Headmaster of Sydney Grammar School.
Career
After brief teaching appointments at Dover College and Abingdon School, he proceeded to further study at Oxford University. He was first Senior Scholar at Keble College, then a Junior Research Fellow, Tutor and Dean of Degrees at Lincoln College, where he was the Anglican chaplain. He resigned from this post in 1985 when he decided to join the Roman Catholic Church.
He took up a teaching post at Eton College in 1985. He left as Head of English in 1989 to become Headmaster of Sydney Grammar School. Whilst in Sydney, Townsend was Patron of the Australian Musicians' Academy and President of the New South Wales Classical Association. After ten years in that post, he returned to England to become Headmaster of Oundle School. In 2005 he was appointed Headmaster of Winchester, the first Roman Catholic to hold that post since the Reformation. In 2011 he was invested a Knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.
He has written books, articles and reviews in the areas of church history, religious literature and education. His analysis of the current state of British education can be found in "Leading an Independent School in England in the New Millennium" in Simon Clarke & Tom O'Donoghue (eds), School Leadership in Diverse Contexts, Routledge, 2015, pp. 115–133.
He has been a Governor of Terra Nova School (Cheshire) 1999-2003, Old Buckenham Hall School (Suffolk) 1999-2006, Ardvreck School (Crieff, Scotland) 2000-2005, Ampleforth College (North Yorkshire) 2003-2006, Bramcote Lorne School (Nottinghamshire) 2003-2005, Mowden Hall School (Northumberland) 2000-2007, Worth School (West Sussex) 2004-2010, The Pilgrims' School Winchester (2005-2013),St Swithun's School Winchester (2005-2013)and St John's School Beaumont (2007-2016) . From 2005-2011 he was a Trustee of the United Church Schools Trust and an adviser to the United Learning Trust. From 2008-2016 he was a Governor of Midhurst Rother College.