I love questions. As a teacher, I get plenty of them every day, some practical, some funny, some that stop me in my tracks. But the best ones are always the ones without an easy answer.
With Science Week coming up next week, it's the perfect moment to celebrate that instinct in our students: the urge to ask why, to question, to dig deeper than the obvious. More than that, I hope we can give them the confidence to keep asking when the questions get hard.
Science teaches us to look at the world with curiosity, to notice, to question, to follow the trail wherever it leads. Sometimes that trail challenges what we thought we knew. In our school community, that's not something to fear. It's what learning is for.
This matters for how we think about science and faith. Too often they're painted as rivals, fighting over the same ground, as if a hard scientific question might somehow shake belief. We don't see it that way here. Science helps us understand how the world works. Faith invites us to wrestle with why - meaning, purpose, our place in it all.
Some of the best questions live exactly in that overlap, and our students should feel free to explore it.
Proverbs puts it well: "It is the glory of God to conceal things; to search out a matter is the glory of kings." I love that invitation. It reframes curiosity, discovery isn't defiance, it's part of the design.
So this Science Week, let's hand our students the big questions. Let them ask about the universe. Let them question what they believe. Let them dig into the evidence and sit with the hard stuff, both science and faith.
We don't need to protect young people from difficult questions.
We need to give them the confidence to ask them.
Mrs Amy Radford
Acting Assistant Head of Secondary: Teaching & Learning / Secondary Science Coordinator
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