Well known Coleraine school principal recognised in King's Birthday Honours List

Receiving the MBE is former principal of Harpur’s Hill Primary School in Coleraine, David Radcliffe. Mr Radcliffe has been honoured for services to education and the community in Coleraine.

Principal of the school for 23 years, Mr Radcliffe was born in Banbridge where his father was a farmer but he chose the education path rather than going into farming.

A winner of the Inspirational Educator of the Year award at the Causeway Coast and Glens People of the Year Awards in 2018, Mr Radcliffe was diagnosed with a very rare form of sarcoma called Ewings Sarcoma in 1996. David had a tumour removed and returned to school life.

However, in June 2013, the cancer struck again, in the same place at the top of his left leg, something that surgeons said was very rare.

“It was in the shower one morning I noticed the firmness again in my leg. I knew what it was straight away,” he told our sister title the News Letter in 2016.

After rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, David was forced to have his full leg amputated to ensure that the cancer could not return.

“It was a difficult decision. I think my wife and kids took it a bit harder than I did, but I just had a feeling that this would happen.

“I had watched a film, ‘Reach for the Sky’, a 1956 British biographical film about aviator Douglas Bader, and I saw how he was able to get on with life with both legs amputated, so I guessed that I could too.”

On June 1, 2015, David set himself two goals: to stand up on his prosthetic leg and speak to the children at prize day, and to hit a golf ball.

The determined principal did both that month, although he admitted that he didn’t hit the golf ball very straight, and he also took up tennis.

Under his principalship, Harpur’s Hill Primary School was awarded the prestigious Marjorie Boxall Quality Mark Award by the Nurture UK network in 2024.

Mr Radcliffe is now Associate Principal at Gracehill Primary School.