My friend and former colleague Dame Patricia Morgan-Webb, who has died aged 79, was the principal of New College Nottingham from 1998 until 2003, and a key figure in the further education sector in Britain.
In 1992, she was one of the first women to be appointed as a college principal, at Clarendon College, Nottingham, with previous experience that meant she was well placed to face the changes implicit in the shift from local education authority control to incorporation.
Small colleges were unlikely to survive the rigours of the new funding regime, and Pat decided to prioritise cooperation above competition. With the support of the Further Education Funding Council for England and the local authority, she created a partnership of colleges that resulted in a four-college merger to create New College, with Pat as its principal.
There was also an international dimension to her work, and she was invited by the post-apartheid South African government to help develop a modern FE system in the country. But, even as her reputation grew, Pat never lost her focus on serving the people of Nottingham – her creation in 1999 of a new campus for New College in Nottingham Lace Market, with a listed mid-Victorian lace factory, the Adams Building, at its core is one such example.
She was made a dame in 2000, the first FE college principal to be so honoured. After her retirement in 2003, New College continued to thrive and is now part of Nottingham College, one of the largest FE colleges in the UK.
The daughter of Evelyn (nee Osland), a shop assistant, and Hector Morgan, a miner, Pat was born in Oakdale, Monmouthshire, a “model” mining village. She attended her local grammar school before graduating from Swansea University with a degree in history and a teaching diploma.
Arriving in the West Midlands in 1965, Pat spent the next few years honing her skills, teaching liberal studies and history at Wulfrun College (now City of Wolverhampton College), and Dudley College, before raising a family. She returned to full-time teaching at Wulfrun College in 1979, when the collapse of traditional industries in the West Midlands meant the time was ripe for innovative and creative leadership.
Pat’s passion, commitment and skills led to a rapid progression through the FE management grades. She took on the role of staff training coordinator then principal lecturer at the Accredited Training Centre in Telford (1983-85), principal lecturer at Bilston College (1985-88), and vice-principal at Hall Green College, Birmingham (1988-92).
In Birmingham, in 1988, Pat met Chris Webb, a college principal, and they married in 1992. In later years they enjoyed widespread travel together, including to a home in Florida that provided the base for further exploration of the US.
Pat is survived by Chris, and by her children, David and Catherine, and granddaughter Grace, from a previous marriage which ended in divorce, and by Chris’s two children and four grandchildren.
