Betty graduates at the age of 101!
AWOMAN who devoted her life to teaching has proved you’re never too old to graduate – after receiving her degree certificate on her 101st birthday.
When Betty Yorke, who lives at Meadway Court care home in Bramhall, turned 100 last year she admitted that her main regret was not having the chance to obtain a university degree.
She started her training at Southlands College in Wimbledon, London, in 1935 but was unable to complete it due to the outbreak of the Second World War. The war having halted her studies, Betty moved to Liverpool, where her father was chaplain at a church and began her teaching career at Liverpool’s Upper Park Street School
In 1939 she travelled with wartime evacuees to Sandbach, where she met her husband Charles at Smallwood Methodist Church and started a family.
Following the birth of their first child, David, in 1946 they moved to Marple Bridge, where they had two more children, Elisabeth and Margaret.
She continued to pursue a successful career teaching biology and giving careers advice and ended up as a senior teacher and head of careers at Wilmslow Girls Grammar School, where she stayed until she retired in 1976.
She also undertook various charity and voluntary works, including with Amnesty International.
Southlands College and others combined to form the Roehampton Institute of Higher Education, which in turn became the University of Roehampton.
At the beginning of this year the university offered former students who had been awarded a Certificate in Education before 1980 the chance to be awarded an honorary Bachelor of Education degree ‘in recognition of the work required to obtain this certificate and subsequent services to education’.
Betty is unable to attend the ceremony for the conferment of honorary degrees at the Royal Festival Hall in London, due to take place in May, so arrangements were made for her to be presented with her certificate on her 101st birthday – and she said she was delighted to finally be able to achieve her wish.
Staff at the care home arranged for a special cake to celebrate her academic achievement, as well as the first year of her second century.