Remembering the music critic who helped found UCAS
RONALD Kay OBE, who established the national system for university admissions and brought its head office to Cheltenham, has died in Charlton Kings at the age of 99.
In retirement he was music critic for the Echo.
Mr Kay was responsible for admissions at Leeds University in the 1950s when he realised that the system couldn’t handle the planned growth in student numbers without reform.
At that time each university had its own application form, and each gave offers independently, with no coordination; as a result, colleges had very little idea each September how many students would actually turn up.
He recognised that a national admissions system was needed, that computers would make it possible, and eventually all universities were persuaded to join up to the scheme. The Universities Central Council on Admissions went into operation in 1962, based in London, with Mr Kay as its executive head.
By 1968 the office had outgrown its premises and transferred to Rodney Road in Cheltenham: Mr Kay was keen to find somewhere that was attractive to live, with good schools to provide a potential workforce, with a postal sorting office capable of handling millions of letters a year, and preferably without its own University, to avoid any suggestion of bias.
UCCA expanded to become UCAS in 1992, after Mr Kay retired, but he was responsible for much of the planning.
Mr Kay was born on 4 March 1920, and grew up in Sheffield.
He gained a scholarship to a grammar school, and then another to Sheffield University, where he graduated in English.
Disqualified from active service in the war because of poor eyesight, he worked at the Ministry of Shipping, organising Atlantic convoys. After the war he joined the Control Commission, which had the task of administering and rebuilding a defeated Germany; there he was billeted at the home of his
future wife Brigitte in Hannover.
At this time his career ambition was to be a professional singer, and Brigitte used to say that she knew she wanted to marry him when she heard him singing Schubert in the bath. His singing career never materialised, but for years the tenor section in the Cheltenham Bach Choir would benefit from his voice.
After Hannover, he joined the British Council and taught first in Copenhagen and then in Vienna.
But when children came onto the scene he and Brigitte decided to settle in England, and he obtained a post as Assistant Registrar at Leeds, which is where the UCCA story began.
He remained in charge of UCCA until his retirement in 1985.
In retirement he moved with Brigitte from Pittville to Charlton Kings.
He became a governor and subsequently Chairman of Trustees at what was then Charlton Park Convent School (where his two youngest daughters had been pupils), and oversaw its transition from a girls’ convent school run by nuns to the co-educational St Edward’s school that we know today.
He also indulged his musical interests by taking a job as music critic for the Echo. For amateur performers his approach was to find something to praise, and if there was nothing to praise, to say nothing; but for visiting professionals he strived to apply the same standards of criticism that they could expect from the London papers.
Ronald and Brigitte had a large and close family: six children, and many grand- and great-grand-children.
They were active members of the Sacred Hearts parish community, were regulars at the Cheltenham German Club, and were both frequent speakers at Probus events.
They would have celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary in August. Brigitte died on Februaru 13, and Ronald followed on May 17, both peacefully at home with family around them.
The funeral service (a Requiem Mass) will be held at Sacred Hearts in Charlton Kings at 11am on June 22.