Ronald Ernest Dearing, Baron Dearing, (27 July 1930 – 19 February 2009) was a senior civil servant before becoming chairman and chief executive of the

Post Office Ltd gd, Oifis a' Phuist kw, Sodhva an Post ga, An Post Ríoga , logo = Post Office Logo.svg , type = State-owned private company limited by shares , genre = , predecessor = General Post Office , foundation = 1987 , founder = , location_cit ...

Early life

Dearing was born in

Kingston upon Hull Kingston upon Hull, usually abbreviated to Hull, is a port city and unitary authority in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It lies upon the River Hull at its confluence with the Humber Estuary, inland from the North Sea and south-ea ...

. He was the eldest son of a docks clerk. His father was killed whilst fire watching during an air raid. Dearing attended Willerby Carr Lane County Primary School before going on to Malet Lambert Grammar School. At the

University of Hull , mottoeng = Bearing the Torch f learning, established = 1927 – University College Hull1954 – university status , type = Public , endowment = £18.8 million (2016) , budget = £190 million ...

, he gained a

BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

in Economics in 1954 during a two-year break from the Ministry of Power.

Career

Dearing joined the civil service as a 16-year-old clerical officer in 1946. By 1967, aged 37, he was one of the two deputy heads of the coal division of the Ministry of Power, with the rank of assistant secretary. In 1967 Dearing had responsibility for two major issues arising from the 1966

Aberfan disaster The Aberfan disaster was the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip on 21 October 1966. The tip had been created on a mountain slope above the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, and overlaid a natural spring. Heavy rain led ...

, in which a huge coal waste tip collapsed onto the town of Aberfan in Wales, killing 144 people including 116 school children. Dearing briefed the then Minister, Richard Marsh on the question of the possible removal of Lord Robens as chair of the

National Coal Board The National Coal Board (NCB) was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the United Kingdom's collieries on "ve ...

in the wake of the damning Davies Report, which found the Coal Board wholly responsible for the disaster, and on the issue of the removal of the remaining tips above the town. He was chairman of the

Council for National Academic Awards The Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) was the national degree-awarding authority in the United Kingdom from 1965 until its dissolution on 20 April 1993. Background The establishment followed the recommendation of the UK government Com ...

(CNAA) from 1987 to 1988. He was chairman of

Ufi Ltd Learndirect Ltd, stylised as learndirect, is a British training provider founded in 2000, owned by the private equity firm Queens Park Equity. The company has a network of learning centres in England and Wales, and also runs some courses online. ...

between 1998 and 2001, and their

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire a ...

based head office is named Dearing House after him. In 2009, just before his death, Dearing co-founded with Kenneth Baker the

Baker Dearing Educational Trust The Baker Dearing Educational Trust (abbreviated as the Baker Dearing Trust or BDT) is a UK-based registered charity established to support, advocate and develop university technical colleges (UTCs) in England. An official partnership with the Dep ...

, a charity made to support

university technical colleges A university technical college (UTC) is a type of specialist secondary school in England that is led by a sponsor university and has close ties to local business and industry. These university and industry partners support the curriculum developm ...

in England.

University of Nottingham

He was later the fifth Chancellor of the

University of Nottingham , mottoeng = A city is built on wisdom , established = 1798 – teacher training college1881 – University College Nottingham1948 – university status , type = Public , chancellor ...

(1993–2000) and the author of the

Dearing Report The Dearing Report, formally known as the reports of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, is a series of major reports into the future of Higher Education in the United Kingdom, published in 1997. The report was commissioned by ...

into Higher Education. The annual teaching awards at Nottingham (initiated in 1999) are named after Lord Dearing, as is a more recent series of teaching fellowships. The main education building on the Jubilee Campus is also named after him. The name ''Dearing Report'' is also applied to the 2001 report which he chaired: "The Way Ahead: Church of England schools in the new millennium".

Personal life

He married Margaret (Meg) Patricia Riley in 1954, whom he had met in a Methodist church when living in

Bermondsey Bermondsey () is a district in southeast London, part of the London Borough of Southwark, England, southeast of Charing Cross. To the west of Bermondsey lies Southwark, to the east Rotherhithe and Deptford, to the south Walworth and Peckham ...

. They had two daughters and lived in Surbiton. Dearing had had cancer since the mid-1990s.

Recognition

In the 1979 New Year Honours, Dearing was appointed to the

Order of the Bath The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I of Great Britain, George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate medieval ceremony for appointing a knight, which involved Bathing#Medieval ...

as a Companion (CB) and in the 1984 Birthday Honours, Dearing was knighted and the Queen conferred the honour upon him on 21 August 1984. In the

1998 New Year Honours The New Year Honours 1998 for the United Kingdom, Barbados, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Christopher and Nevis were announced on 30 December 1 ...

, he was announced to be a life peer and was raised to the peerage as Baron Dearing, of

in the County of the

East Riding of Yorkshire The East Riding of Yorkshire, or simply East Riding or East Yorkshire, is a ceremonial county and unitary authority area in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and west, South Yorkshire to t ...

. In 2000, Lord Dearing visited Malet Lambert School Language College,

, to open a new building constructed for the use of science and geography, it being named the Dearing Centre. Similarly, in 2004, he visited Hymers College,

, whereupon he opened the new science block with the purpose of educating the children in the areas of physics and chemistry. The Dearing Building on the University of Nottingham's

Jubilee Campus The University of Nottingham operates from four campuses in Nottinghamshire and from two overseas campuses, one in Ningbo, China and the other in Semenyih, Malaysia. The Ningbo campus was officially opened on 23 February 2005 by the then Britis ...

is named after this former chancellor of the university.

Notes

External links

BBC February 2009

''Times'' February 2009

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dearing, Ronald 1930 births 2009 deaths Crossbench life peers Knights Bachelor Companions of the Order of the Bath People associated with the University of Nottingham Deaths from cancer in England English Methodists Alumni of the University of Hull People from Kingston upon Hull Chairmen of Post Office Limited Life peers created by Elizabeth II