Recent comments

  • Reply to: New book inspired by Professor Jim Gallacher - Access, Lifelong Learning and Education for All   11 months 1 week ago

    As a colleague and friend of Jim's I am very moved to see this publication. Congratulations to all contribitors, and to the editors. As Maya Angelou wrote 'If you are going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can't be erased'. Jim achieved that on that on so many levels; this book is testimony to that

    Dr Judy Harris

  • Reply to: Uwezo Uganda 2021 National Assessment Report Launch   2 years 1 month ago

    On behalf of Uwezo Uganda, I take this opportunity to convey to Dr Rob Mark of CR&DALL our thanks and gratitude for honoring our invitation to participate virtually at the launch of the 2021 Uwezo Uganda National Learning Assessment report titled, Are our children learning? Illuminating the Covid-19 learning losses and gains in Uganda, on Tuesday, 18th January 2022. We were greatly honored by his presence, participation, commitment and passion. We reaffirm our commitment to ensure improved and equitable quality learning for all children in Uganda.

     Below is the link to the full report and a YouTube recording to the launch event.

    · Full report: https://uwezouganda.org/uwezo-report-final-version/

    · Launch event: https://youtu.be/M3_sriXMo0M

    Thanks so much for helping to circulate them with your colleagues and contacts. Dr Mark's participation at the launch was highly appreciated.

    Mary Goretti Nakabugo, PhD | Executive Director

    Uwezo Uganda

    Corner House, Suite B1

    Plot 436/437, Mawanda Road

    Kamwokya, Kampala

    P.O Box 33275, Kampala, Uganda

    Website: https://uwezouganda.org/

    E-mail: [email protected]

                [email protected]

    Twitter: @MNakabug

  • Reply to: Adult educator: advocate for the right for access to education, women’s literacy and decolonisation   2 years 2 months ago

    I met Lalage for the first time when I was a Masters student at Edinburgh c30 years ago. I was struck then by her wisdom, knowledge and passion. I met her at least once a year at various events and she was always an inspiration for how to be as an academic. One particular memory is beng at a conference in Edinburgh marking Kenneth King's career. I had the pleasure to be amongst the last to leave the Southside Bar that night along with Lalage. Like some others here, I met her last in Nottingham just before lockdown. I had a young Ugandan researcher with me (one of George Openjuru's team) and Lalage amazed him with her knowledge of Ugandan society and adult education. I would have been delighted to have been in touch with her just now to tell her that I had joined Glasgow and CRADALL - and I would have loved to hear her account of where Glasgow adult education has come from and where it is going.

  • Reply to: Adult educator: advocate for the right for access to education, women’s literacy and decolonisation   2 years 2 months ago

    I joined Glasgow University’s DACE in 1991, at the start of Lalage’s last year as Head. I was appointed primarily to extend the Access programme to science and engineering subjects; also to develop and deliver courses in Astronomy and other sciences in what had become, under Lalage’s leadership, the broadest programme of continuing education among the UK universities. I had worked previously as a researcher in Physics and Astronomy and this was quite a culture change for me – probably much more than I realised at the time. I appreciated her kind concern for new members of staff, for our induction and development, and I was struck by her great enthusiasm for and interest in all the very varied sorts of work that came under the DACE roof.

    I’m also struck now, thinking back, by comments she made that have stayed with me, single sentences even that went to the heart of the matter being discussed in a particularly penetrating way. From comments like these I gained a strong sense of the value of adult education, particularly mature student Access. Meeting her in subsequent years you found this acuity undimmed, even into her 90s. 

    I’ll always be grateful to Lalage for my admission to the world of adult education. I’m sorry she’s left us but her memory will be a lasting inspiration.

  • Reply to: Adult educator: advocate for the right for access to education, women’s literacy and decolonisation   2 years 2 months ago

    Lalage was one of the warmest and most generous people I have met, and possessed a formidable mind and astuteness about people which I will never forget. She always seemed lit from within to me. I met Lalage in her role as a patron of the Centenary Commission for Adult Education, for which I was a commissioner, which I know John Holford has written about. But I had the great honour in July 2019, at the end of the last face to face SCUTREA conference, of interviewing her, very informally, while she waited in my office for a taxi to take her back to the station. I have the recording and the transcript of the interview. It was a remarkable moment as, as it was so informal and off the cuff, Lalage talked about her time at Oxford and her memories of being there with Tony Benn, Shirley Williams and Margaret Thatcher, who she was quite unimpressed by. She was very funny and almost mischievous. She was also wonderful on learning to be an adult educator just after the war and the importance of the United Nations. I had the very highest regard for Lalage and, without wishing to be clichéd, she was a genuine inspiration to me and a touchstone for adult education as a pedagogy.