John Reddaway
Cambridge engineer who brought students face to face with the practical demands of industry
JOHN REDDAWAY, who has died aged 92, was a Cambridge engineer who introduced what became known as the “Reddaway plan”, a pioneering approach that brought engineering students face to face with the practical demands of manufacturing industry and which remains the inspiration for much teaching and training at the university today.
From 1983 to 1993 he served as secretary of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (now Cambridge Assessment), leading its transformation from a well-respected cottage industry into an international and more dynamic concern.
Cambridge had been experimenting with practical courses for its engineering students as early as 1953, when William Hawthorne, the first Hopkinson and Imperial Chemical Industries Professor of Applied Thermodynamics, organised for various industry players to take on undergraduates during the long vacation.
In the mid-1950s, building on this programme, Reddaway, with engineering department colleagues, began work on a postgraduate course lasting a year, with no final exam, which interleaved lectures from academics and practitioners with two- to three-week placements in factories across the country, concluding with an optional tour abroad.
Funded with the support of numerous companies, the aim of the “Reddaway Plan”, as it became known, was to provide engineers-in-training with a more professionally relevant experience, which would improve on the then common practice of “sitting next to Nelly” – learning through working alongside an experienced staff member.
The placements, which typically involved students analysing and improving factory operations, were overwhelmingly successful, and records show that the majority of participants went on to leading positions at established companies, or founded their own.
John Lewis Reddaway was born into a poor family at Yeovil in Somerset on April 19 1926 and attended Yeovil Grammar School, which he left at the age of 16, his mother having managed to support his staying on to take his Higher School Certificate after his father’s death. He was fiercely proud of his origins and never lost his West Country burr, gleefully recalling his headmaster’s vain efforts to get him to use received pronunciation. His accent was, of course, an asset, helping him to relate to others and put them at ease.
In 1942 he joined Westland Aircraft as an engineering apprentice and became involved in assembling wing tips for the first Seafires, preparing them for war service. In 1943 he won a cup for best apprentice of the year and he was the first recipient of a Westland Cambridge Scholarship, after receiving coaching in the then mandatory Latin for the entrance examinations.
He went to Corpus Christi in 1944 to read Mechanical Sciences and gained Firsts in Parts I and II as well as the John Bernard Seely Prize for Aeronautics in 1947. He played in goal for the college football team and rowed at Henley in the first postwar regatta.
He returned to Westland after graduation as a technical assistant, but after a year moved to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, then in 1951 to Normalair, a subsidiary of Westland, to work on the development of aircraft oxygen equipment.
In 1952 he returned to Cambridge as a demonstrator in the engineering department, being appointed a lecturer in 1955 and serving as deputy head of department from 1971 to 1974. In 1960 he was elected a Fellow of Emmanuel College, where, as bursar from 1974 to 1983, he was best known for his coup in purchasing Park Terrace from Jesus College, a controversial move at the time which turned out to be one of Emmanuel’s best investments.
As secretary of the Local Examinations Syndicate Reddaway was as natural with schoolchildren as with ministers of Education. He loved the overseas visits which played a vital role in the expansion of the Syndicate’s international activities, and it gave him pleasure that to the outside world the name Cambridge often signified examinations rather than the University itself. In 1992 the Syndicate won a Queen’s Award for Export Achievement.
Reddaway was an active and popular tutor, holding memorable parties at his home and maintaining contact with generations of students. His 90th birthday was celebrated at Emmanuel (where he became a life fellow in 1994) with a dinner in hall, packed with colleagues and former students, for which he chose a menu of scallops, duck and crème brûlée.
He never lost his interest in college: June Admissions would see him, dressed in white suit and Panama hat, watching the graduands as they lined up to process to the Senate House.
Reddaway’s first wife, Cherry, died in 2005 and in 2007 he married Elizabeth. She survives him with a son and daughter from his first marriage.
John Reddaway, born April 19 1926, died January 9 2019