Marjorie Ethel Reeves 1905–2003

Marjorie Reeves turned her attention to politics and to the education of the young in the 1930s. In 1938 she returned to Oxford as Tutor in History to the Society of Oxford Home Students. Reeves was one of the small band of scholars who kept alive the Oxford Faculty of Modern History during the Second World War, and at the same time she was actively involved in the transformation of the Society of Home Students, first into a permanent Private Hall of the University, and eventually into full collegiate status as St Anne's College. She made a valuable contribution to public policy-making in the post-war years (1947–65). Reeves was an early a member of the Schools' Broadcasting Council, and from 1947 to 1961 of the Central Advisory Council of the Ministry of Education. She sat on the 1961–4 Robbins Committee on Higher Education, which resulted in the establishment of the first post-war wave of new universities including York, Lancaster, Sussex, Essex, Warwick, East Anglia, and Kent. In 1965, Reeves published Eighteen Plus: Unity and Diversity in Higher Education, and in 1988 The Crisis in Higher Education: Competence, Delight and the Common Good.