The headmaster of one of London’s most prestigious private schools is standing down after losing his “temper” at a staff party.
Joseph Spence, the master at Dulwich College in south London since 2009, told staff and parents he will leave next month.
The 64-year-old wrote: “As some of you may have heard, I lost my temper with a member of staff at the staff party of 4 July — the only time in my career that anything like this happened.
“That incident has caused me to reflect on the toll which leading a complex, multinational institution like Dulwich has taken on me, particularly given the significant challenges we have all faced in recent years.”
He added he had apologised to the staff member.
Parents, who can pay up to £55,000 a year to send a child to the school, also received a letter from the chair of governors Adrian Carr who said Spence, who was due to retire next August, would stay on at the historic school in “an ambassadorial and advisory capacity”.
In May 2024, Spence was shortlisted for the Times Education Supplement Independent Headteacher of the Year award.
An interim headmaster will take over before Robert Milne, headmaster of Emanuel School in Battersea, takes over next September.
The school was set up in 1619 by Edward Alleyn and its old boys are nicknamed Old Alleynians. Among their ranks are actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nigel Farage, explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and writers PG Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler.
The college, which is a boys school, operates an international network of schools with more than 9,000 pupils in China, South Korea, and Singapore.
The school hit the headlines three years ago when a former private schoolgirl told how she warned Mr Spence there was a “culture of misogyny” at his school five years ago.
Heather O’Donnell, a former pupil at nearby Alleyn’s School, said she sent a letter signed by 160 boys and girls from two neighbouring south London private schools to the master in 2016.
She spoke out after the headmistress of neighbouring James Allen’s Girls’ School, known as JAGS, said claims her pupils had been sexually harassed by Dulwich College boys were “abhorrent”.
Alex Hutchinson said accounts of sexual harassment given by women and girls were “harrowing” and called for lasting change.
