Our friend and colleague Sue Cathcart, who has died unexpectedly aged 65, recognised the chances that further education gives to young people wanting to make up for wasted schooldays. In the late 1960s she taught in Brixton, south London, and in the 1970s at Uxbridge Technical College, in west London, where she was a lively and inspiring teacher of social studies, totally involved in her students' progress, and good at dealing with "difficult" young people.
She was born Susan King in Devon and after attending Plymouth high school for girls she moved to London in 1965 to study for a London University external degree in sociology at the Borough Polytechnic (now South Bank University). Among the first students to take this external degree, Sue worked with passion and eloquence for her subject, and played pivotal roles in the dramatic society, where she met her future husband, Steve, whom she married in 1970, and made several friends.
Sue and Steve embarked on their lifelong habit of restoring old houses. They moved into the ancient Poet's Cottage, in Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex, and then into a nearby rundown Victorian semi. While Steve worked with troubled families at a local residential centre, Sue cared for her widowed father as well as their three children, Saul, Simon and Helen. Her restless, creative spirit led her to fit in a City & Guilds course and set up Rooks' Wood workshop, where she offered classes to all-comers in the design and renovation of clothing and furniture.
When the family moved to north Cornwall, there were tough times to endure in the long renovation of the Old Vicarage at St Clether, but the children remember the fun of their outdoor life. Sue created and taught an interior design course at Duchy College, encouraging business ideas and giving all her students support.
Steve died from a brain tumour in 2010. Sue's children survive her.