Sandra Stalker obituary

Other lives: School headteacher who later advised governments around the world on educational issues

My mother, the educationist Sandra Stalker, who has died of cancer aged 78, was not an academic expert on Shakespeare, Byron, Eliot, Yeats or Dylan, but she understood them intimately. In a classroom or in casual conversation in a pub she could explain how great literature impacts civilised societies and our shared humanity. She was one of nature’s great teachers.

From the early 1970s onwards Sandra taught at schools in Warwickshire, and around 1989 was appointed head of the Harris school, Rugby. A keen rugby enthusiast, she took particular pride in leading the school to the English Schools Sevens final in the mid-90s, finishing runners-up to Dulwich college after defeating several other leading public schools. Most joyful of all was parking the borrowed 23-seater Rugby Town “Fun Bus” alongside the massive luxury coaches of those schools.

While at the Harris school, Sandra became senior examiner in English literature A-level for the Joint Matriculation Board. On leaving the school in 1999, she took up consultancy work.

Earlier in her teaching career, a Fulbright exchange had taken her to Coon Rapids, Minnesota, in 1977–78, and in 1999 she returned to the US as education adviser to Jesse Ventura, the governor of Minnesota, helping to integrate the education and qualifications systems of the Chippewa Nation and the state of Minnesota.

Back in the UK, she was an adviser to the 2004 Tomlinson report into the reform of education for 14 to 19-year-olds. After serving as head of post-14 curriculum at the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Authority (2005-08) and director of general qualifications and life skills (2008-11), she joined Ucas to advise on widening the participation in and the scope of universities. She also advised governments and educational bodies in Jamaica, Bahrain and across the EU on curriculum and qualifications.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, she was commissioned by the University of Cambridge to develop a liberal arts foundation curriculum for students whose lives and education had been disrupted in some way, which has proved to be a great success. She ended her consultancy work in 2020.

Born in Derry, to Alec Glenn, a gas fitter, and Minnie, a shirtmaker, Sandra excelled at Londonderry high school (now Foyle college) before reading history and English at Queen’s University Belfast, under the tutelage of Seamus Heaney and JC Beckett. She gained a PGCE teaching qualification at Reading University, where she met her future husband, Geoff Stalker, a fellow trainee. After teaching at Larne grammar school, she moved to the Midlands, where Geoff had a teaching post, and they married in 1972 – he later became a professional artist.

She is survived by Geoff and me.