Secretariat

Roy Niblett

We are very sorry to have to report the death, on 6 May 2005, of Emeritus Professor Roy Niblett, CBE, former Professor of Education and Director of the Institute of Education.

Born in 1906, Professor Niblett was educated at the Universities of Bristol and Oxford before becoming, in 1930, Senior English Master at Doncaster Grammar School. In 1934, he was appointed as Lecturer in Education at Kings College, Newcastle, at that time part of the federal University of Durham, of which he went on to serve as Registrar from 1940 to 1944. Appointed Professor of Education at the then University College of Hull in 1945, he moved to take up the Chair of Education at Leeds in October 1947, becoming Director of the newly-established Institute of Education in the following year.

Professor Niblett's time as Director was a highly successful and fruitful one. When he resigned from his Chair and the Directorship at the end of 1959 in order to become Dean of the University of London Institute of Education, the then Vice-Chancellor, Sir Charles Morris, wrote that he was the first Director of our Institute which was established ten years ago at a time when many people thought it was a speculative venture, and it is primarily due to his faith and his imaginative ideas that the University now enjoys such happy relations with the teachers training colleges in the Institute, with the Local Education Authorities and with the schools. Professor Niblett published extensively on educational policy and philosophy and was much in demand as a lecturer and adviser overseas. Within this country, he was a member of the University Grants Committee from 1949 to 1959 and of the National Advisory Council on Training and Supply of Teachers from 1950 to 1961, also serving on a number of other educational foundations and associations.

Professor Niblett was created CBE in 1970. In 1992, he was named Life Vice-President of the Society for Research into Higher Education, having at that stage been actively involved in its work for some thirty years.

A full obituary was published in the Guardian on 11 May 2005 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1480845,00.html).