New village head's a woman on a mission (From Tewkesbury Admag)

New village head's a woman on a mission

PUPILS, parents and staff have welcomed a new head teacher to a Cotswold village school.

Karen Lewis, aged 40, is bringing experience gained in Africa and Hungary to Swell Church of England School in Lower Swell.

She said her calling to the teaching profession came when, as a young secondary school pupil in her home town of Abingdon, Oxfordshire, she was sent on work experience to her old primary school.

After graduating from Worcester College she took a post at a school in Hertfordshire for four years before joining the Baptist Missionary Society, which took her to a school in Zaire - now the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, worsening civil unrest in the troubled African nation saw her returning home after two months.

She then spent several months teaching English at Hungary's International Baptist Lay Academy, where she met her Scottish husband, Graham.

The couple now have two children who both attend Swell School - Neil, eight, and Callum, six.

After they returned to Britain, she taught at three schools during 11 years in Kent and was deputy head at the last of them for six years.

She decided to take the job at Swell, which has 42 pupils aged from four to 11, because it was small, family-oriented and church-affiliated, as well as being close to her parents' home.

Mrs Lewis said she was already enjoying her new post and was looking forward to the challenges ahead. "It's a very different type of job, head teacher, because you are managing and looking at how you can take a school forward and help the children get the best learning they can."