Ruskin College
Later that year, he was appointed as principal of Ruskin College, Oxford, an independent institution founded in 1899 to provide university standard education for working class adults with few or no qualifications so that they could act more effectively on behalf of working class communities and organisations, such as trade unions, political parties, co-operative societies and working men's institutes. As principal of Ruskin until his retirement in 1979, he presided over an expansion of the college's facilities and student numbers, and securing increased funding and eventually persuading the government to make it mandatory (rather than discretionary) for Local Education Authorities to provide grants to the college's students. It was while laying the foundation stone of the college's Steve Biko building in October 1976 that the prime minister, James Callaghan, launched what became known as a "great debate" on educational standards. Callaghan questioned "the new informal methods of teaching which seem to produce excellent results when they are in well-qualified hands but are much more dubious when they are not".
Hughes involvement in adult education extended beyond Ruskin and continued into his retirement. He was president of the Workers' Educational Association, served on the Russell committee on adult education (1969–73), chaired the Adult Literacy Resource Agency, and also served on the advisory council for adult and continuing education, the National Institute of Adult and Continuing Education, and the Civil Service Arbitration Tribunal.
He survived his wife by four months, and died at his home in Merton, Bicester, on 15 November 1995 aged 81.
Read more about this topic: Billy Hughes (educationist)
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