4 January 2026 News Abingdon There be dragons Warhammer Club continues to be a very popular Other Half option for Lower School pupils with some enjoying building and painting the miniatures and some getting stuck in with battles. This term has seen a breakaway faction, led by Dungeon Master (DM) in chief Austin, starting to play Dungeons and Dragons. Austin has done a great job of teaching the basic rules, designing campaigns, and training up apprentice DMs. In November, a group of Sixth Form linguists went head to head with pupils from other schools in the annual Cheltenham Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) debating competition. In teams of two, they tackled topics such as whether the voting age should be lowered to 16, whether ChatGPT does, in fact, threaten education and whether planes and cars should be banned. The Spanish team went through to the final to debate the motion Spanish food is the best in the world, but narrowly lost to their opponents. Special congratulations go to the German champions, Alex and Edmund, who convinced the adjudicators that you can best learn German from memes and TV series. Well done to all involved, not just for their contributions to the debates, but also the impressive spirit and generosity they showed their opponents. Cheltenham debates The finalists from last term's House Challenge competition formed a team to compete in the prestigious Schools Challenge quiz this term, where they were drawn against Brentwood School in the first round. Our team exhibited excellent knowledge on the English Civil War and orthography, but struggled with questions on the Muppets Christmas Carol! Sadly we were narrowly beaten, but look forward to success in the Plate competition. Marking the Battle of Britain Four senior cadets, Max, Harold, Harry and Fynn, as well as Major Lee Edwards and Lieutenant Colonel Rebecca Cottam, were invited as guests of Tony Edwards (OA 1962) to a Battle of Britain 85th anniversary dinner held on 10 September at the RAF Museum, London. Fynn read a poignant vignette about three Battle of Britain pilots, made more touching by the fact that he is the same age as one of them. @rugfoot photo Schools challenge
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTUxNTM1