A FORMER long-serving Keighley head teacher has died aged 88.

Clifford Dyke was head of Eastwood School which subsequently became Swire Smith School. He died at Queen Alexandra Hospital, in Portsmouth, on March 7.

Mr Dyke’s wife, Jean, said: “He was highly respected and had a strong Christian faith which kept him going all his life. He lived for his faith, and that really sums him up.”

Mr Dyke was born in Bentley in 1926 and qualified as a teacher at Sheffield City Training College and following National Service with the Royal Air Force took up a post as a maths and physics teacher at a school in Derbyshire. He was a Labour councillor and mayor of Ilkeston in Derbyshire in 1962/63. In 1967 he and his wife moved to Keighley after he became head of Eastwood School and retired from teaching in 1985.Mrs Dyke said her husband was extremely active outside of work and was a keen member of the Scouts and a Methodist preacher.

After leaving education Mr Dyke moved to Suffolk with his wife, and took on a role as lay pastor for three Methodist churches. The couple, who had one daughter and one son, moved to Hampshire in 2004 to be closer to family. His funeral is at Emsworth Methodist Church on Monday.