My friend and former teacher Vivien Jacobs, who has died aged 89, was one of a pioneering generation of educators passionately committed to comprehensive education. She was a talented teacher whose 45-year long career was spent in two flagship London schools and who recognised, long before it became fashionable, the vital importance of emotional wellbeing to academic achievement.
Vivien was born in London, where her father left her mother, Helene Jacobs, when she was very young. After boarding school Vivien trained as a sports teacher at Loughborough University and went on to become one of the founder teachers of English at Holland Park school in London, to which Tony and Caroline Benn sent their children. Both at Holland Park and later at Haverstock school, whose pupils included David and Ed Miliband, colleagues spoke of her as a gifted and dedicated teacher, the archetypal “complete professional”. She was a trained school counsellor and an inspiring champion of the arts, setting up a highly successful film club at Haverstock (showing films by Andrzej Wajda and Sergei Eisenstein) that many former pupils remember with affection.
A firm supporter of the Labour party throughout her life, she was an enthusiastic theatregoer and film lover who supported many arts organisations. On retirement she took a photography course, finding the perfect way to document her enjoyment of travels across Europe, India and Bhutan. She also took an advanced driving test and once drove alone from London to Mallorca across the Pyrenees. At Haverstock school she sponsored a writing competition with Zoë Heller, Melissa Benn and her friend the Independent journalist Donald Macintyre. She also volunteered for ChildLine and took reading groups in local schools.
Vivien was independent, sometimes solitary, artistic, a sympathetic listener, passionate about her ideals and always stimulating. She never married, but lived happily for many years with her sister Kay, a primary school headteacher, before Kay’s death from a brain tumour in 1989.
