My associate, Del Goddard, who has died aged 77, had main roles in schooling and enterprise networks in his native space – Enfield, north London – in addition to nationally and internationally.
He was an inspiring chief and mentor as a instructor, Labour councillor, native authority deputy director of schooling, board member and secretary of Labour Enterprise (which nurtures hyperlinks between the celebration and enterprise leaders); and as a faculty governor, chair of Lee Valley Leisure Belief and a group activist.
He was elected to Enfield borough council in 1996, and served till 2014, for the final 4 years as a cupboard member, driving the council’s expertise agenda, enterprise improvement insurance policies and concrete regeneration initiatives.
As Enfield’s deputy director of schooling, within the late Eighties and 90s, Del had a artistic method to his job: he was not restricted to tried and examined strategies. Gordon Hutchinson, then director, remembers Del as “a supreme networker, who saved us in contact with the very best academic concepts and observe in England and Europe”. Enfield was an early adopter of the Technical and Vocational Schooling Initiative, which inspired younger folks to study the talents wanted for work by modernising the curriculum and introducing computing and varied applied sciences.
An innovator in a world faculty enchancment community, from the early 80s Del initiated faculty improvement planning (SDPs), with faculty stakeholders collaborating, setting priorities and monitoring enchancment.
Del set out the beliefs that drove his work in his 1992 ebook The Seek for High quality: Planning Enchancment and Managing Change (co-written with Marilyn Leask): “The capital of a nation depends upon enhancing the standard of the schooling of every technology. The standard of schooling depends upon the standard and motivation of the instructing pressure but in addition on the motivation of youngsters. Each of those are straight influenced by the values and attitudes of society.”
Born in Balham, south London, Del was the elder son of Cecilia (nee Walker), a secretary earlier than marriage, and Frederick Goddard, an engineer and welding teacher. He was educated on the native grammar faculty, and skilled as a instructor at Goldsmith’s School, London. He taught in Croydon faculties, then moved into instructor coaching at Rachel McMillan School of Schooling, Deptford. In 1979 he joined the native schooling authority in Enfield, as chief of its Academics’ Centre, then turned chief adviser in 1985 and later deputy director. He continued to function a governor of Orchardside faculty in Enfield till his dying.
Del had roles and affect throughout the NUT over many a long time. He was chair of Enfield NUT and an everyday delegate and speaker at conferences all through the Eighties.
I used to be instructing after I met Del within the 80s by one in all his academic initiatives, and we turned companions after the dying in 1988 of his spouse, Anne (nee Manson), whom he had married in 1970 and with whom he had a daughter, Rachel.
I survive him, together with Rachel, and his brother, Ian.
