My partner, Anne Oxborough, who has died unexpectedly aged 72, devoted her life to the teaching of English in schools and colleges.
After she graduated from Birmingham University, her first job was at Harriet Costello school in Basingstoke, Hampshire, followed by Normanton high school in Pontefract, Yorkshire. She then moved to the south-west and taught at Bideford school on the north coast of Devon.
In 1991 she was appointed a lecturer at Exeter College. There she progressed into senior leadership roles, rising to assistant principal. She was influential in helping the college become an outstanding tertiary institution. Part of her role was to establish the international baccalaureate as a valuable part of the curriculum. As many students have testified, she was “the teacher who made a difference”, and in 2013 she was nominated by the principal and governors and appointed OBE.
Throughout her teaching career, Anne had the gift of making students, parents and her educational colleagues feel that she was on their side, without ever betraying the highest standards she brought to her work.
Born in Birmingham, she was the eldest daughter of Wallace Lawler, a prominent local politician and, for a brief period, Liberal MP for Birmingham Ladywood. Her mother, Catherine (nee Durkan), had worked as a secretary before her marriage, at the plastics company managed by Wallace.
Anne was educated at King Edward VI Camp Hill school for girls, and then studied English at Birmingham before embarking on her teaching career. After retirement in 2013, she became a governor and then an influential chair of governors at the successful Exeter Maths school, established in 2014, and remained as a governor until her death.
In later years she was involved in literary festivals and events, including Ways With Words, in Dartington, Devon, Words By the Water, in Keswick, Cumbria, and the Southwold literary festival in Suffolk, establishing herself as a sensitive interviewer who made her subjects feel valued through her meticulous research and thoughtful questioning.
Throughout her professional and personal life, she established warm relationships with people. The combination of self-deprecating seriousness and an irreverent lightness of touch made her a much loved person, and she had a large circle of friends and family.
Anne was married and divorced three times before she and I became partners 31 years ago; we entered into a civil partnership in 2024. She is survived by me, her daughter, Naomi, from her marriage to Roland Oxborough, her grandson, Kit, and sister Caroline.
