Freda Gwilliam

Freda Howitt Gwilliam (1907–1987) was a British educationist concerned about the education of girls and women in the British Empire. She was referred to as the "Great Aunt of British Colonial Education".

Life
Gwilliam was born in Feltham in 1907. Her parents were Kate Elizabeth (born Howitt) and Frederick William Gwilliam. Her father was a prison governor. She left Rochester Girl's Grammar School to read history at Girton College in Cambridge. She graduated in 1929 with an honours degree and went to teach at Falmouth county high school and then at Francis Holland School for girls. In 1936 she became a lecturer in Chichester at Bishop Otter Teachers' Training College.

Five years later, in 1941, she went to lead Brighton Training College. Space was at a premium and some the colleges lessons were held in the Royal Pavilion.

In 1947 she gave up being a college principal to work at Britain's Colonial Office in a newly created role of "woman educational adviser". She worked for Sir Christopher Cox and it was her job to travel around the huge British Empire to meet Directors of Education to find out about the education of women and girls. She wrote one of her early reports with Margaret Read about the education of women and girls education in Nyasaland.

In the 1950s she guest lectured at UCL Institute of Education. When she was not touring the empire she interviewed women for key roles in education.

She joined a large number of voluntary organisations including the executive committee of Voluntary Service Overseas in 1963, which in time she chaired.

In 1966 her 1954 OBE was upgraded to a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Birthday Honours list.

She retired in 1970 as Deputy Chief Education Adviser to the Minister in the Ministry of Overseas Development, but she returned in 1972 to join the Pearce Commission which was tasked with deciding whether the newly proposed constitution for Rhodesia was acceptable. She was the only woman on the large team.

Gwilliam died in her home in Feltham in 1987. She known as the "Great Aunt of British Colonial Education".