It is with great sadness that we share the news that Joan Atkinson, a consultant who helped to establish Quest for Education (now Quest for Education Foundation) and worked closely with it and KEF, died in January 2018. Our thoughts are with her family and friends.
A teacher to the core
Joan was a retired headteacher. She brought her experience of schools and teaching to everything she did for the children of rural Pakistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).
How Quest for Education began
Joan visited the teacher training institute run by the Kashmir Education Foundation (KEF) at Bassali. She came home determined to help. She became closely involved with Quest for Education, which was founded in 2011, and helped to establish it as a consultant, alongside Iffat Ferdinand and the other founders.
Joan spent a considerable amount of time in Pakistan, supporting KEF’s schools and the training of their teachers. She believed that good teaching means helping children understand and apply what they learn, not simply memorise it, and she encouraged the institute’s focus on critical thinking and on preparing children to become lifelong learners.
Every child’s right to learn
Joan championed the right of every child, girls included, to an education and a dignified life. That conviction runs through the work she helped to build: schools where places do not depend on a family’s ability to pay, where girls learn alongside boys, and a teacher training college that trains women as primary teachers.
Her colleagues and friends at QEF and KEF will miss her wisdom, warmth and determination. The best tribute we can offer is to carry on the work she cared about so much.
Honouring Joan’s legacy
If you would like to remember Joan, please consider supporting the training of teachers, the cause closest to her heart. One well-trained teacher reaches generations of pupils.
Editor’s note: KEF’s college at Bassali now bears her name: the Joan Atkinson College of Teacher Education. The photograph shows trainees and trainers at KEF’s Institute of Teacher Education in 2006–07.