By Al McConville, Director of Learning and Innovation

We received the very good news this week that Bedales has been accepted into the Round Square organisation. Round Square is an international network of schools inspired by the educational philosophy of Kurt Hahn, who was a correspondent of John Badley, and who himself founded schools based on experiential learning principles.

The Bedales ethos has a great deal of resonance with the six ‘IDEALS’ of Round Square, which are Internationalism, Democracy, Environmentalism, Adventure, Leadership and Service, and we plan to use our membership of the network to learn from and teach other member schools about how to enact these ideals even more successfully than we (or they) currently do.

My own contact with Round Square schools and attendance at their big international conference last year (along with students Freya Leonard and Anton Ellis, pictured above) has inspired by the big push we have been having on ‘service learning’, or learning through volunteering. Membership of the network will provide a range of exciting opportunities for our students to connect with other holistically minded students around the world, and even participate in short term exchanges with schools in other countries.

Find out more about Round Square on their website, here.