You had to prove that you were worthy and, of course, in parenthesis, it was all free,” she says.The world in which the OIA operates – currently on a voluntary basis; 16 universities have not yet signed up – is very different from Dame Ruth’s student days. The constraints were much greater and we accepted all that – which is odd, looking back on it. But above all we were really grateful to have got in.”She had nothing to complain about at St Anne’s, she says, but the concept was in any case unheard of: “I don’t think it would have occurred to us – or to many of our contemporaries – to complain. Again, the idea of complaint was not part of the culture: “I think this is interesting. There has been a sea change in higher education, which is why I think we have been established,” she says, speaking of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA), the soon-to-be statutory authority dealing with student complaints.”When I went to college, it was a minority pursuit, especially if you were a woman. She went to Christ’s Hospital, West Sussex, which was at the time a strict, single-sex boarding school: “My goodness me,” she says, thinking back: “The only boy we ever saw delivered the vegetables on a bicycle once a week, but we all ran to the window to see this spotty youth.”
Then came St Anne’s College, Oxford, where she went in 1962 to do law. It has been praised by Ofsted inspectors as “very good”, for achieving high standards of academic success.

Many pupils come from underprivileged backgrounds but teachers were praised for overcoming difficulties with close monitoring of attendance and discipline. It recently opened a new sixth form with £3m of government money There are up to 10 applications for each place.. Dame Ruth Deech, the university sector’s newest regulator, had the kind of education in which the concept of student complaint was unthinkable. A note was found nearby in which she talked about the stress of facing the exams.Police said the death was not being treated as suspicious. A post-mortem examination will take place at St George’s Hospital today. A groundsman at Dunraven School discovered her at about 8am on Monday and she was taken to St George’s Hospital, Tooting, where she died that evening Her mother and her stepfather were at her bedside.

It is thought she may have taken an overdose of anti-malaria tablets.The Year Ten pupil was one of the brightest in her year and was due to take maths and religious education GCSEs a year early. An inquest is to be arranged.Dunraven is a co-educational Foundation School with GCSE results above the national average. She would have taken one of the exams yesterday.Dunraven School principal Richard Townsend said the teenager, who was of Polish origin, was found “very unwell” in a recreation area in part of the upper school site early on Monday morning. A bright teenage girl who died after she was found unconscious at her school had left a note complaining about the stress of taking exams. Children are growing up in a new and challenging world – but it is teachers who ‘bear the brunt’.”The survey of 230 teachers in 65 secondary schools also revealed that heads were having to appoint extra staff to deal with behaviour problems..