Death of Pat Daunt (Horsham Staff 53-65)

[Delderfield]

Just found this obituary on the Guardian website:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/d ... rick-daunt

[michael scuffil]

This is sad news, but it is good to know that he had a good long life. He was certainly one of my favourite teachers. Although employed to teach classics, he taught Grecians divinity (in effect Philosophy), and one project (which landed with me) was on the Eastern Orthodox Church. This culminated in his inviting Metropolitan Anthony, the head of the Russian Orthodox church in England, to come and talk to a few selected Grecians at the headmaster's house one evening. He was among other things an enthusiastic Labour supporter, and very publicly so (wearing a red tie on election day) which did not endear him to all of the staff in those rather stuffy days. But in other respects he was quite conservative, and CMES got him to write a notice on 'good manners' in the CH context. The obituary mentions that he left to head a comprehensive in Crawley, where I believe he succeeded in introducing the teaching of classics.

[J.R.]

This is sad news, but it is good to know that he had a good long life. He was certainly one of my favourite teachers. Although employed to teach classics, he taught Grecians divinity (in effect Philosophy), and one project (which landed with me) was on the Eastern Orthodox Church. This culminated in his inviting Metropolitan Anthony, the head of the Russian Orthodox church in England, to come and talk to a few selected Grecians at the headmaster's house one evening. He was among other things an enthusiastic Labour supporter, and very publicly so (wearing a red tie on election day) which did not endear him to all of the staff in those rather stuffy days. But in other respects he was quite conservative, and CMES got him to write a notice on 'good manners' in the CH context. The obituary mentions that he left to head a comprehensive in Crawley, where I believe he succeeded in introducing the teaching of classics.

Thomas Bennett Community College, Tilgate Crawley. Strangely, their website hasn't been updated of late !

[keibat]

May he rest in peace and rise in glory. I think he already had (and shared) a good dose of the light perpetual in his lifetime. Like Mike Scuffil, I remember him as one of my favourite teachers - unstuffy, enthusiastic, his time in Sydney having been pretty far on the left, a pro-comprehensive education classicist, anglo-catholic, – just a glorious coalescence of striking traits which in combination, if not separately, reflected a personality unafraid of narrow conformism. I liked the reminiscence about his 'good manners' notice – although Michael mentions this as a 'conservative' feature in an unconservative personality, the point about good manners is of course respect for others. I did not know about his impressive later career as a disabled rights activist, but am not surprised.

[Chris T]

The following informal recollections were written by a son of Pat Daunt and give further insights into this remarkable man.

He was Head of English at Thomas Bennett School in Crawley and my own teaching career began observing his department at work in September 1982.

Dad writes of M. Bowra* as follows, in their first meeting (Dad has just suggested reading Law).
MB: 'Impossible, dear boy. Dreadful subject. Got to be Classics. We'll let you off Mods, you can have your degree in five terms. Enjoy yourself! Hope you won't miss the camaraderie of the wardroom too much'.

There was an escapade which Dad claims began after being 'up all night with RV and some others', and continued as he tried to escape from College to buy some cigarettes. Unfortunately he ended up in a Don's bathroom and was gated for a fortnight.
Of which MB said: 'Climbing, dear boy? And not even a commando? Ah, got it! Not a commando, deep psychological wound!'

*Sir Maurice Bowra (MB) was a very famous, witty and humane head of Wadham College Oxford, when Pat Daunt was there.

OBITUARY
There is an excellent obituary of Pat Daunt in the Times, by Professor Michael Fielding, of the Institute of Education in London. It complements the Guardian obit, which is readily available using a reference given above. However since now one has to pay to read the Times obit, I have reproduced it below. (Excuse me taking so much space, Mr Moderator! I hope that you agree it is justified.)

Published at 12:01AM, December 19 2013
Pat Daunt was a leading figure in the development of comprehensive education in England. He was an inspirational headteacher and pioneering advocate of the educational principle of “equal value” which brought dignity and fulfillment to a generation of young people. In the latter part of his career this formed the basis of his ground-breaking international work in special seeds and disability.
A compelling writer and profound thinker, his 1975 book Comprehensive Values was one of the first and most eloquent explorations and affirmations of what comprehensive education is truly for, not merely what it is against. The book inspired a generation of teachers in the vanguard of the egalitarian tradition of comprehensive education.
The origins of Daunt’s espousal of the equal value principle, which his writing and his professional practice did so much to develop, lay not only in his deeply held, enduring commitment to Christian Socialism. Perhaps counter-intuitively given his later opposition to independent schools,it also owed much to his formative experiences at Rugby School. Here, he felt he experienced the reality of equal respect and personal freedom within a communal framework.
After a short wartime spell as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, in 1946 he went up to Wadham College Oxford on an open classical scholarship. Having obtained a first, in 1949 he took up his first teaching post as a classics lecturer at the University of Sydney. Here, after an exemplary start, the return of the depression that plagued him in his pre-Oxford years led two years later to a dramatic disappearance into the Australian outback.
His walkabout eventually ended a couple of years later when he bumped into his mother by chance in a Brisbane street. That reunion brought him back into the family fold and, despite missing the death of his father while he was away, Daunt shaped the rest of his life around his family.
After 12 successful years at Christ’s Hospital School, Horsham, where he was a housemaster and senior classics master, he resolved to explore possibilities within the state sector. Unsure about how to go about it, he went back to the appointments board at Oxford University and was told that Tim McMullen was retiring as head of Thomas Bennett School in Crawley, West Sussex, at that time lauded as one of the best comprehensive schools in England. In 1964 he visited the school and was smitten, both by the young people and by McMullen. The following year he successfully applied for the headship.
For all his admiration for McMullen and the work he had done to create a new comprehensive school of national distinction, Daunt’s arrival presaged a radical change of direction. For him the aim was to achieve exemplary educational goals for all, not just some, young people. This meant getting rid of streaming and developing a common curriculum resting in large part on integrated forms of study.
Unsurprisingly, the remarkable nature of the work at Thomas Bennett meant he was in significant demand as a lecturer on HMI and local authority courses and in university departments of education and from 1972-1974 he was chair of the National Campaign for Comprehensive Education. However, by the early 1970s, in Sussex and, indeed, nationally, the climate for comprehensive schools was significantly changing. This and the sheer hard work of headship was taking its toll. In 1973 Daunt resigned his post.
Daunt next moved to Brussels to work in the field of special needs and disabilities. In February 1974 he began what was to be 13½ years’ pioneering international work for the European Union and, subsequently, UNESCO.
He was the author of the first proposals for EU action on special needs education; first head of the EU Bureau for Action in Favour of Disabled People; UNESCO consultant for the reform of special educational needs in Romania, and subsequently honorary president of their national association, RENINCO. These only gesture at the range and depth of his contribution to the field, which, among other things, led to the setting up of the European Disability Forum.
His commitment to the traditions of comprehensive education were demonstrated when he expressed his profound disquiet on hearing a newly appointed headteacher proudly proclaim that he wanted the best for his pupils. Reflecting on what many, now more than then, would regard as a legitimate, even a laudable, headteacherly aspiration, he insisted: “I was shocked because what I was committed to was not being the best school — but for all schools to be good; for all children to have the best education.”
Daunt is survived by a widow, Jean, and by three sons and a daughter.
Pat Daunt, educationalist, was born on February 19, 1925. He died on November 6, 2013, aged 88

[Martin]

The most recent issue of the Wadham Gazette (the annual magazine for Wadham College, Oxford; Pat's College) contains a short obituary for him. I have reproduced it below because it describes an interesting event in his life, only hinted at in the other obituaries posted above.

From the Wadham Gazette, for 2013
PATRICK ELDON DAUNT 1925-2013
From an Open Scholarship at Rugby, Pat Daunt, son of a Hastings GP, came to Wadham in
1946 as an Open Classical Scholar after war service as a naval sub-lieutenant. He suggested
to Warden Bowra that he’d read Law, with the reply: ‘Impossible, dear boy. Dreadful subject.
Got to be Greats. We’ll let you off Mods, you can have your degree in five terms. Enjoy yourself.
Hope you won’t miss the camaraderie of the wardroom too much’. A hard slog followed, with
much camaraderie thrown in, and he came down with his First in 1948. He went immediately
to a classics lectureship at Sydney University, but the strain had been too much and he
became a headline briefly in 1951 when his clothes, and no Pat, were found on Bondi Beach.
Rather than go to a new post at the University of Western Australia he had gone walkabout and
joined a road gang in the wilds of northern Queensland.

The hue and cry ended with a cable to his mother: ‘Ignore reports. All well. Do nothing’. Back
in England he became senior classics master and a housemaster at Christ’s Hospital, in 1958
married Jean (née Hargreaves) and they had two sons and a daughter there (a third son was
born in 1970) before he won in 1965, against stiff competition, the headmastership of the
new showpiece comprehensive at Crawley, Sussex, the Thomas Bennett School. He became a
leader in the comprehensive movement, chairing the Campaign for Comprehensive Education
in 1971-3 and producing his influential Comprehensive Values in 1975.

The Daunts moved to Brussels in 1974 to Pat’s new post in the EEC, first as Prinicpal
Administrator in the Education Department and in 1982 as first head of the Bureau for Action
in Favour of Disabled People, a cause that filled the remainder of his working life, and beyond,
when among many consultancies and chairmanships in the Disabled field, he was Visiting
Fellow concerned with Special Educational Needs in London University, 1988-95.

Among many articles, chapters and two more books, he advised readers of the procomprehensive
Forum in 1991 how the system could be transformed by studying European
models and called for ‘British revival of child-centred programmes based on more radical
positions’.

In final retirement in Cambridgeshire he served for 14 years as churchwarden of Abington
Church and he and Jean busied themselves with their family and their nine grandchildren. He
was writing a synthesised narrative of the four Gospels, when cancer was diagnosed. He died
on 6th November 2013, aged 88.