Jane Ogborn obituary

My mother Jane Ogborn, who has died aged 91, was committed to opening up the study of English Literature to secondary school pupils of all backgrounds.

She worked with like-minded colleagues to introduce young people to the classics and to broaden the curriculum to include writing in English of all sorts.

Jane was born into difficult circumstances. Following the murder in Burma (Myanmar) of her father Jack Mackereth, a forestry officer, her mother, Georgina (nee Stephens), was forced to return to the family home in Warminster, Wiltshire, months before Jane’s birth.

Jane attributed her frugality, her imperviousness to illness and cold and her store of countryside lore and superstition to her wartime upbringing in a multigenerational household of women. Her way forward was through education.

In 1945 she was elected as an “orphan foundationer” by the Drapers’ Company to attend Howell’s school in Denbighshire as a boarder. From there she won a scholarship to Girton College, Cambridge, to study English, graduating in 1956.

Jane Ogborn in the 1960s

Having met Jon Ogborn through participating in Cambridge theatre, she married him in 1957 and they moved to London for teacher training: Jane in English, Jon in science. After living in Earl’s Court and Greenwich, and then Worcester, they – and their three children – settled in Blackheath, south London, in the much-loved Span house where Jane lived for the rest of her life.

Following their divorce in 1976, Jane became a full-time English teacher at south-east London’s then largest comprehensive school: Crown Woods. Over four decades, as a teacher (1973-86), school inspector (1987-92) and chief examiner (1984-94), and through the English Media Centre (trustee 1990-2013) and with Cambridge University Press, she worked to transform English teaching.

This involved reshaping teaching methods, text books and curriculums taking in feminist, socialist and anti-racist principles. She helped to develop the first English literature O-level (“Plain Texts”) in which students had the set texts in the examination room, and the first A-level syllabus (AEB 660) to include coursework; both were revolutionary ideas at the time.

Her aim was always to make studying English accessible to all those who loved (or might love) literature. She also made the best marmalade anyone ever tasted.

Jane is survived by her three children, Kate, Harriet and me, her grandchildren, Cora, Matthew, Louis and Eve, and her great-grandchild, Alba.