Ralph Townsend (headmaster)

Ralph Douglas Townsend (born 13 December 1951, in Nedlands, West Australia) is an Educational Consultant. He is Chairman of the Cothill Educational Trust and Chairman of Winter's School Finder UK. He was Headmaster of Winchester College from 2005-2016. He was previously Headmaster of Oundle School and before that Headmaster of Sydney Grammar School.

He was educated at Scotch College, in Perth, Australia. He went on to read English at the University of Western Australia, having won a Commonwealth Scholarship. He then began his graduate studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury.

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.

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