Force behind EU action to support the rights of people with disabilities
Patrick Daunt, who has died aged 88, led the European commission's first initiative in support of disabled people. From 1982 to 1987, he laid the foundations for the commission's policy in this field, initially focusing on employment, transport and education. His work culminated in 2010 with the EU's ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and its new task of working to ensure that disability rights became part of the mainstream of EU legislation.
Patrick's book Meeting Disability: A European Response (1991) gave a frank and still relevant account of the obstacles to creating new policies both inside the commission and in working with governments. In the early 90s, he provided the first account of special needs education in the new democracies of eastern Europe for a book that I edited. I got to know him more fully when we co-edited a book on teacher education for special needs in Europe.
The son of Winifred (nee Wells) and her husband, Francis Daunt, a doctor, Patrick was born in Hastings, East Sussex, and won an open scholarship to Rugby school. After war service in the Royal Navy, he gained a first-class classics degree at Oxford and for two years was a lecturer at Sydney University. Then he went on what he described as a two-year "walkabout" in the outback, working as a stockman while he considered what to do with his life.
For 12 years he taught at Christ's Hospital school, West Sussex, and in 1965 became headmaster of Thomas Bennett community college in Crawley, one of Britain's earliest and largest comprehensive schools, and chair of the national Campaign for Comprehensive Education, in which he worked with the educationist Caroline Benn. His book Comprehensive Values (1975) was a statement of what such schools were trying to achieve.
After leaving the European commission, he worked with the first post-communist government of Romania as a Unesco consultant. His efforts resulted in the creation of four pilot schools in different regions for children with disabilities, at a time when they were expected to live permanently in poor-quality institutions and there were few family supports or services in the community.
Faced with civil servants from the old regime who strenuously resisted change, he co-founded Reninco, a network of governmental and non-governmental organisations keen to bring about improvement, which has gone from strength to strength. His legacy continues in working links between Romanian and other European universities, under the EU Tempus programmes. Patrick also ensured the provision of trained teachers to support less experienced colleagues in Romania's schools.
When he and I were keynote speakers in the formal setting of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, he carried the day with the warmth of his personality as well as by the power of his arguments for the inclusion of children with disabilities in every Chinese school – a policy that was incorporated into a five-year government plan a few years later, albeit with disappointing outcomes.
He spent his last years teaching Greek to local classes and for the University of the Third Age, and in translating the gospels from the original Greek. He also used his botanical expertise to catalogue the flora around his Cambridgeshire village where he acted as churchwarden.
He is survived by his wife, Jean, whom he married in 1958, his children, Will, Caroline, Tom and Francis, and nine grandchildren.
• Patrick Eldon Daunt, teacher and policymaker, born 19 February 1925; died 6 November 2013
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