My dad, Peter Bainbridge, who has died aged 76 after a bad fall from which he never regained consciousness, truly believed in the transformative powers of education. He spent his life working in different aspects of social work and education, always putting others before himself.
After early posts as a community worker in Newport and London, in 1974 he moved to Rochdale, north Manchester, to become head of community education at Balderstone community school, then the borough’s head of community education. He went on to become director of education in north Tyneside, then an inspector for the Further Education Funding Council, and from 2001 until his retirement in 2006 worked as an independent education consultant.
