Head teacher steps down to care for father (From York Press)

Easingwold School head teacher Carey Chidwick steps down to care for father

8:21am Monday 6th February 2012 in Education news By Haydn Lewis, haydn.lewis@thepress.co.uk

Carey Chidwick

THE head teacher at a North Yorkshire secondary school is stepping down after more than 11 years at the helm.

Carey Chidwick took over the headship of Easingwold School in September 2000 following the retirement of the former head, Peter Fletcher.

In a letter sent out to pupils and parents on Friday, Mrs Chidwick said she was having to take early retirement to help care for her critically ill father.

She said: “Since Christmas, my father has been critically ill and my mother is too infirm to take care of him. They live in Kent and my family responsibility is clashing with my professional responsibility and this has become untenable over the last few weeks.

“I have approached the local authority and their staff have been good enough to negotiate with the governors to release me with effect from this half-term. An interim head teacher will come into school while the governors set in train the process to recruit a new head teacher for Easingwold School. I am sorry to go – I have loved being in this school – but everyone here knows my motto, ‘Health and family first.’”

Mrs Chidwick came to the school having been head of Berwick-upon-Tweed High School in Northumberland. She is a specialist in modern foreign languages. During the course of her career she has been an Ofsted inspector and also a local education authority adviser for modern languages.

A graduate of King’s College, London, Mrs Chidwick holds a diploma from the Universite de Saint-Etienne in France and a PGCE from the University of Liverpool. During her tenure at Easingwold the school, which has 1,320 pupils, and takes students from North Yorkshire and the north York area, including Haxby and Wigginton, gained specialist language status in 2006.

Last year, the school celebrated another set of excellent GCSEs while Year 13 students celebrated a 100 per cent overall pass rate for the third year in a row at A-level, with eight per cent of entries gaining the new A* grade. Nearly half were A*, A or B, and 76 per cent between A* and C.

A spokeswoman for North Yorkshire County Council said: “Carey Chidwick has been an established and very well-respected head teacher at Easingwold School for a number of years.

“We understand the priority she now needs to give to her family responsibilities, brought about by her father’s critical illness, and we will be very sorry to see her leave the North Yorkshire local authority. As Mrs Chidwick is leaving the school at short notice, the local authority will ensure that the leadership of the school is secure for the interim period until a new head teacher can be appointed.”