Kathleen Wilson-Jopp Educationalist

KATHLEEN WILSON-JOPP, who has died at 82, devoted her life to improving educational opportunities for children with disabilities, both in her native Yorkshire and her adopted home of Innsbruck, Austria.

Born in Bramley, Leeds, where as a child she lived above her parents’ hardware shop, she was educated at Swinnow Primary and West Leeds High School followed by secretarial training. She worked first at The Yorkshire Post offices in Leeds, then as secretary to the Conservative Party agent in Easingwold, and finally as secretary to the librarian at the University of York.

In 1961, on a Wallace Arnold coach holiday to Innsbruck she met her future husband, Rudolf, who, as a student there was acting as a guide to a castle she visited.

After marrying Rudolf in 1967 and settling in Innsbruck, she had three children, Lucia, Stefan and her youngest, Reinhold, who had severe learning difficulties. She knew then that her vocation was to help others like him.

In Britain, the late 1970s and 1980s were important times of change in education. The Warnock Report followed by the 1981 Education Act led to the demand for more mainstream inclusion for children with special needs, wherever possible, and Kathleen brought Reinhold to Leeds to see at first hand the changes which were taking place.

She worked as secretary to Malcolm Stonestreet, the vicar of Bramley, who supported her endeavours, and met headteachers who were implementing the new ideas.

Reinhold thrived at Tranfield School in Guiseley, and was welcomed into the local cub scout group. In a short time he was fluent in English, which he has never forgotten.

After a year they took their Yorkshire experiences back to Innsbruck, where Kathleen set up discussion groups of like-minded parents. She soon discovered that as a consequence of wartime Aryan policies, Austria had no community of older adults with learning difficulties.

Whilst not always popular for her views, she continued to promote the ideas of inclusion she had seen developing in Leeds. It became her life’s work and she lived to see many of the ‘Leeds’ ideas come to fruition in Innsbruck.