My father, Jonathan Brown, who has died aged 88, was an expert in adult education who moved from schoolteaching into working on policy initiatives designed to encourage the extension of educational opportunity to older students.
He began his career in adult education in 1966, as a lecturer at the Police Staff College in Bramshill, Hampshire, before moving in 1970 to the adult education department at Newcastle University as a lecturer in politics. There he set up courses directed specifically at women who had been bypassed by mainstream education, and successfully encouraged BBC Radio Newcastle to invest in educational programming for adults. He was also a political pundit on local radio and TV during local and general elections.
