My mother, Jenny Scribbins, who has died aged 76, was a much-respected leader in adult and further education who for many years was principal of one of the UK’s largest further education colleges and who served in advisory roles on a number of educational bodies.
Jenny was born in London, to Mildred (nee Crane), secretary to the National Council for Domestic Studies, and Clifford Purkis, who worked in the gas industry and became director of research for British Gas. She survived a second world war convoy to Australia with her mother and sister, travelling to join her father who had been posted there as a civilian scientific expert to work on Australian-British military planning.
The family returned to the UK in 1945 and Jenny went to North London collegiate school, in Edgware, and then St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she took a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. After that, she focused for most of the 1960s and 70s on looking after the three children of her marriage to Bob Scribbins, but she also set up and ran a community playgroup, and in the 70s became a professional adviser to the Pre-school Playgroups Association in Greenwich.
Between 1980 and 1982 she was a lecturer responsible for parent education and educational home visiting in Bethnal Green and Hackney, east London. She gained a diploma in adult education, and her career took off in 1982 when she became vice-principal and soon principal of Putney and Wandsworth Adult Education Institute. In 1989 she became principal of the new, larger Wandsworth Adult College, created from the merger of three institutions, where her leadership was regarded as hugely capable and inspirational.
After Wandsworth Adult College merged with South Thames College of Further Education, Jenny was principal of the combined institution (now South Thames College), which served 25,000 students and was one of the largest colleges of its kind in the UK. She also became chair of the BBC’s Education Broadcasting Council, and of several other further education institutions.
In retirement she was a governor of Kingston University London, an adviser to the Citizenship Foundation, a charity that focuses on developing young people’s citizenship skills, and a trustee of the Sir Walter St John’s Educational Charity, a body that makes grants to promote the education and training of people under the age of 25. Additionally, she was chair of the governors of Morley College in central London.
Her marriage to Bob ended in divorce and in 2001 she married John Brown. He died in 2004.
She is survived by her three children with Bob – Peter, Matthew and me – seven grandchildren, two sisters and a brother.
