THE headteacher of a secondary school at the centre of claims about staff bullying is leaving.

Lynton Karmock-Golds, headteacher at Cleeve Park School, Bexley Lane, Sidcup, announced her departure to parents in a school newsletter last Friday.

She will be taking up a headship at another school from January next year.

Cleeve Park has been troubled by a series of complaints which first surfaced last year.

This September it was facing a possible strike by some teachers over the new timetable.

There have also been complaints about the headteacher to school governors when several pupils were turned away on the first day of term after their A2 courses were cancelled without any notice.

They subsequently had to find new places at other schools and colleges.

Problems at the school first came to public attention in May last year, when GCSE pupils staged a protest in the school field against the headteacher's decision to stop their study leave.

Mrs Karmock-Golds said the situation had been a "misunderstanding".

In October last year the findings of two independent anonymous surveys of staff at the school were made public.

They revealed concerns about staff bullying, harassment and victimisation.

Bexley's National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) claims little has improved at the school since the bullying complaints were made a year ago.

Branch secretary Jim Hughes says the union had ongoing concerns about the management at the school which had not been resolved.

He said problems had resurfaced in the summer when changes were being made to the timetable without proper consultation, to provide teachers with more non-contact time to prepare lessons and other teaching tasks.

On the last day of the summer term the NASUWT lodged a collective dispute and the National Union of Teachers followed.

On the first day of the autumn term this year, NASUWT members agreed to a ballot for industrial action and voted overwhelmingly in favour.

The issue was finally resolved at a meeting with the school governors on September 30.

Mrs Karmock-Golds has been at Cleeve Park for four years.

She was head at Bradbourne School in Sevenoaks for three years, where it is understood there were also complaints about her management style.

A council spokesman confirmed Mrs Karmock-Golds had resigned and said a date for the headteacher's departure had yet to be decided.

She added following a local authority audit at Cleeve Park, an independent consultant had been appointed to "review leadership and management issues related to staffing throughout the school".