My friend and colleague Hilary Perraton, who has died aged 86 of cancer, played a key role in developing distance learning. He was one of the first employees of the National Extension College (NEC), established in 1963 by Michael Young (Lord Young of Dartington) as a pilot for an open university. Later he helped to promote these new methods in less developed countries.
Hilary was born in Lee-on-the-Solent in Hampshire to Leslie, a college lecturer, and Marjorie, a teacher. He attended Churcher’s College school in Petersfield and then learned Russian during his national service years. He studied history at St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, where he met fellow student Jean Warner, whom he married in 1960, two years after his graduation.
His first job was for the London county council, “looking after dustbins”, as he put it. From there he went to the Associated Examinations Board as an administrative officer, before joining the newly established NEC. There he helped to pioneer courses combining TV and radio broadcasts, written materials, science kits, postal tutorials and occasional face-to-face sessions.
By 1971 he had joined the International Extension College so that he could help to develop these new methods for the benefit of people in developing countries and, on secondment in 1973, he helped to establish the Botswana Extension College. On his return two years later he worked with Young and colleagues to devise a co-operative arrangement with the University of London Institute of Education to provide accredited courses in distance learning.
In 1983 Hilary moved to the Commonwealth Secretariat where, drawing on his extensive contacts across the Commonwealth, he was chief architect with Lord (Asa) Briggs in creating the Commonwealth of Learning to promote the use of distance learning methods for socio-economic development.
He moved to Barbados in 1994 to develop such programmes for the University of the West Indies and then, on returning to Cambridge in 1996, founded and directed the International Research Foundation on Open Learning. His many publications included Open and Distance Learning in the Developing World (2000).
His colleagues found him scrupulously, often stubbornly, honest in his judgments, incredibly supportive, and totally uninterested in status or self-promotion. Nevertheless, the Commonwealth of Learning awarded him an honorary fellowship and, in 2005, he received an honorary doctorate from the Open University.
A lifelong reader of the Guardian and a member of the Labour party, he was passionately interested in current affairs, and in retirement from 2002 onwards wrote several books exploring how and why people have travelled abroad to study, including A History of Foreign Students in Britain (2014).
He also found time, for some years, to serve as treasurer for an annual Oxfam Walk, and revived his Russian by reading Russian novels with a U3A group. Holidays were always important and he loved to walk in the Lake District and along the South West Coast Footpath, a love he passed on to his children.
He is survived by Jean, their children Jonathan and Claire and granddaughter Ruby.
