My former colleague Derek Robson, who has died aged 83, had a life closely connected with Methodism and education.
Born in Birmingham, Derek was the son of Denis, a County Durham coalminer who became a Methodist minister, and Emma (nee Jeary), was a seamstress. He boarded at Prior’s Court school in Newbury, Berkshire, and then at Kingswood school in Bath.
After graduating in history from Queens’ College, Cambridge, he took up a teaching position at the City of Norwich boys’ school and then at the co-educational state boarding school Wymondham college in the same county.
Around this time he met Barbara Moss, assistant and later head of physical education at the Norwich high school for girls, and they married in 1962. Derek moved on to became a senior lecturer at Carnegie College and School of Physical Education in Leeds, and in 1971 he was appointed headteacher at Culford school, near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, which was run by a Methodist foundation.
During an era in which many traditional private boarding schools had to modernise in order to survive, Derek oversaw Culford’s transformation into a co-educational direct grant school, and over his 21 years at the helm there he introduced a new dynamism into its educational facilities and management structures.
His liberal approach also led to inevitable tension with some conservative elements, but by the time he left in 1992, many aspects of school life had been transformed. After Culford Derek became education secretary for the Methodist Church and secretary to the board of management for Methodist Residential Schools.
On retirement in 1997 he and Barbara settled in Norfolk, where he continued his commitments as a Methodist local preacher – duties he had carried out for 50 years in the various places he had lived. The onset of Alzheimer’s in his final years brought pressures on Barbara and an end to full participation in family and social life.
He is survived by her, their children, Helen, Mark and Simon, and nine grandchildren.
