Patrick Daunt obituary

Patrick Daunt influenced the growth of schooling for children with disabilities, in nations like Romania and China

Patrick Daunt, who has died aged 88, led the European commission’s 1st initiative in support of disabled folks. From 1982 to 1987, he laid the foundations for the commission’s policy in this area, at first focusing on employment, transport and education. His work culminated in 2010 with the EU’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Individuals with Disabilities, and its new task of operating to guarantee that disability rights became component of the mainstream of EU legislation.

Patrick’s guide Meeting Disability: A European Response (1991) gave a frank and still relevant account of the obstacles to creating new policies each within the commission and in functioning with governments. In the early 90s, he provided the 1st account of specific demands training in the new democracies of eastern Europe for a book that I edited. I acquired to know him more completely when we co-edited a book on instructor education for special demands in Europe.

The son of Winifred (nee Wells) and her husband, Francis Daunt, a doctor, Patrick was born in Hastings, East Sussex, and won an open scholarship to Rugby school. Following war service in the Royal Navy, he acquired a first-class classics degree at Oxford and for two years was a lecturer at Sydney University. Then he went on what he described as a two-12 months “walkabout” in the outback, operating as a stockman whilst he regarded as what to do with his life.

For twelve years he taught at Christ’s Hospital school, West Sussex, and in 1965 grew to become headmaster of Thomas Bennett local community school in Crawley, one particular of Britain’s earliest and greatest thorough colleges, and chair of the national Campaign for Complete Schooling, in which he worked with the educationist Caroline Benn. His guide Complete Values (1975) was a statement of what this kind of colleges have been making an attempt to attain.

Following leaving the European commission, he worked with the very first publish-communist government of Romania as a Unesco advisor. His efforts resulted in the creation of four pilot schools in different areas for children with disabilities, at a time when they were anticipated to reside completely in bad-quality institutions and there were handful of household supports or providers in the local community.

Faced with civil servants from the outdated regime who strenuously resisted alter, he co-founded Reninco, a network of governmental and non-governmental organisations keen to carry about improvement, which has gone from strength to strength. His legacy continues in doing work back links between Romanian and other European universities, under the EU Tempus programmes. Patrick also ensured the provision of trained teachers to support much less experienced colleagues in Romania’s colleges.

When he and I had been keynote speakers in the formal setting of the Wonderful Hall of the People in Beijing, he carried the day with the warmth of his personality as effectively as by the electrical power of his arguments for the inclusion of children with disabilities in each Chinese school – a policy that was incorporated into a 5-yr government plan a number of many years later, albeit with disappointing outcomes.

He spent his last years teaching Greek to local lessons and for the University of the Third Age, and in translating the gospels from the authentic Greek. He also used his botanical skills to catalogue the flora close to his Cambridgeshire village exactly where he acted as churchwarden.

He is survived by his wife, Jean, whom he married in 1958, his young children, Will, Caroline, Tom and Francis, and nine grandchildren.

• Patrick Eldon Daunt, instructor and policymaker, born 19 February 1925 died six November 2013

Patrick Daunt obituary