Neil Scanlan obituary | Training
My good friend and colleague Neil Scanlan, who has died abruptly elderly 70, held robust socialist ideals and sought to maximize the advantages of group make stronger in serving to all youngsters, from no matter background, to achieve and exhibit the whole vary in their talents. To this finish, he was once at the leading edge within the creation in colleges of a person’s “document of feat”, which confirmed no longer simplest take a look at and exam performances, however different spaces of pastime and construction.
Born in Liverpool, right into a working-class circle of relatives, Neil was once the youngest of 4 youngsters of Harry Scanlan, a painter and decorator, and his spouse, Eileen. He was once the primary in his circle of relatives to cross the eleven-plus and cross to college. Neil steadily attributed his leftwing perspectives partly to the truth that his mom was once a chum of the ambitious Liverpool MP Bessie Braddock – perspectives that had additional evolved at Alsop highschool, Walton, and the College of Liverpool, the place he studied economics.
Neil was once an lively member of his constituency Labour birthday celebration and labored tirelessly to make stronger the mining group all the way through the 1984-85 strike. He was once introduced with an engraved miner’s lamp from a South Yorkshire pit, “in appreciation of his make stronger” – a tribute of which he was once very proud.
Following educating enjoy, Neil joined Lancashire LEA as a senior colleges adviser, heading the authority’s evaluation workforce and dealing with colleges requiring further make stronger. He was once additionally instrumental in putting in, within the past due Nineteen Eighties, a countrywide frame for evaluation advisers, the AAIA, to make stronger colleges and native schooling government within the implementation of the newly presented nationwide curriculum. Neil additionally took over the organisation of a few extremely a success AAIA nationwide meetings.
His position in Lancashire evolved and in later years he headed Lancashire’s provision for pupils out of college, supporting the ones youngsters too sick to wait, and controlled the Quick Keep Colleges workforce, for pupils excluded or vulnerable to exclusion. After taking early retirement in 2010, to appear after his youngest son, Oliver, Neil maintained hyperlinks with native colleges by way of performing as a governor and governor teacher, and an inspiring chair of governors.
Neil liked sports activities, particularly working, football and latterly strolling soccer (avid gamers aren’t allowed to run). He additionally evolved a different pastime in crusing and in soccer training to make stronger Oliver. Some other pastime was once song, particularly blues song, and I recall many satisfied occasions spent at blues gala’s in Burnley and in Colne.
A lifelong supporter of Liverpool FC, he noticed their Eu cup win in Istanbul in 2005. He was once an ideal recommend for the Hillsborough justice marketing campaign and was once forthright about the way it affected the entire town of Liverpool.
Neil is survived by way of his spouse, Claire (nee Chadwick), whom he married in 2000, and their son, Oliver; by way of two sons, Simon and Drew, from his marriage to Sue, which resulted in divorce; and by way of his siblings, Michael, Paul and Carol.
