My partner, Del Goddard, who has died aged 77, had leading roles in education and business networks in his local area – Enfield, north London – as well as nationally and internationally.
He was an inspiring leader and mentor as a teacher, Labour councillor, local authority deputy director of education, board member and secretary of Labour Business (which nurtures links between the party and business leaders); and as a school governor, chair of Lee Valley Leisure Trust and a community activist.
He was elected to Enfield borough council in 1996, and served until 2014, for the last four years as a cabinet member, driving the council’s skills agenda, business development policies and urban regeneration projects.
As Enfield’s deputy director of education, in the late 1980s and 90s, Del had a creative approach to his job: he was not limited to tried and tested methods. Gordon Hutchinson, then director, remembers Del as “a supreme networker, who kept us in touch with the best educational ideas and practice in England and Europe”. Enfield was an early adopter of the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative, which encouraged young people to learn the skills needed for work through modernising the curriculum and introducing computing and various technologies.
An innovator in an international school improvement network, from the early 80s Del initiated school development planning (SDPs), with school stakeholders collaborating, setting priorities and monitoring improvement.
Del set out the beliefs that drove his work in his 1992 book The Search for Quality: Planning Improvement and Managing Change (co-written with Marilyn Leask): “The capital of a nation depends on improving the quality of the education of each generation. The quality of education depends on the quality and motivation of the teaching force but also on the motivation of children. Both of these are directly influenced by the values and attitudes of society.”
Born in Balham, south London, Del was the elder son of Cecilia (nee Walker), a secretary before marriage, and Frederick Goddard, an engineer and welding instructor. He was educated at the local grammar school, and trained as a teacher at Goldsmith’s College, London. He taught in Croydon schools, then moved into teacher training at Rachel McMillan College of Education, Deptford. In 1979 he joined the local education authority in Enfield, as leader of its Teachers’ Centre, then became chief adviser in 1985 and later deputy director. He continued to serve as a governor of Orchardside school in Enfield until his death.
Del had roles and influence within the NUT over many decades. He was chair of Enfield NUT and a regular delegate and speaker at conferences throughout the 1980s.
I was teaching when I met Del in the 80s through one of his educational initiatives, and we became partners after the death in 1988 of his wife, Anne (nee Mawson), whom he had married in 1970 and with whom he had a daughter, Rachel.
I survive him, along with Rachel, and his brother, Ian.
