At our Summer 2025 Graduation Ceremonies 100 former Certificate in Education students from the 1980s and earlier were awarded Honorary Degrees. These student teachers would have been awarded a full bachelor’s degree had they studied with us in later times, and we wanted to recognise their studies and subsequent achievements with this award.

The University of Hull has a proud history of Teacher Education, and in this article we celebrate that history, and those who’ve been part of that history, and who themselves have gone on to make an impact in the lives of so many of their own students. Below, you can read Professor and Head of School of Education Richard Woolley’s brief history of Teacher Education at Hull and his justification for making this award. In January, we’ll be awarding another 40 of these degrees.

If you are the holder of a University of Hull Cert. Ed, please contact Professor Richard Woolley, giving your years of study, your full name at the time when the award was made, your date of birth and, if possible, a copy of your certificate (or other evidence that you were a University of Hull student).

Please also include brief details about your career and life history after your time at the University of Hull. If you are in contact with others who trained as teachers and were awarded a Cert. Ed by the University of Hull, please let them know of this opportunity and ask them to contact Richard at HoS-SchoolofEducation@hull.ac.uk or at School of Education, Wilberforce Building, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, HULL HU6 7RX.

We want to celebrate your achievements and the long history and heritage of Education at Hull, so please get in touch and encourage others to do so, too!

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A Proud History of Teacher Education

From its founding, the University of Hull has had educational-development at its core. Adult Education was one of the founding departments of the University, coming formally into existence on 1^st January 1928.  The University’s first appointed Professor was in Adult Education.

The Department offered the majority of its programmes to local students, mostly off-campus and often part-time, with large programmes in Beverley, York, Grimsby, Scunthorpe and Scarborough and smaller offerings, often in response to student demand, sometimes through partnership with the Workers Educational Association, in up to a hundred villages in East Yorkshire and on the south bank of the Humber. The School of Education at the University of Hull still engages with an extensive network of Colleges across the region, enabling the delivery of degrees to students in their own locality and with a very similar reach and has an extensive series of partnerships with a very diverse range of organisations.

Teacher education has its roots in delivery both in Hull and at the Scarborough campus. Initially intending teachers gained a Certificate in Education (Cert Ed) before moves in the 1980s to offer undergraduate degrees in Education notably through a Bachelor of Education (B Ed) degree. Over the years, teacher education developed to offer qualifications across the primary, secondary and tertiary phases of Education.

Most recently, the School of Education has taken an innovative approach to preparing future teachers through two-year accelerated degrees in both Primary and Secondary Teaching Studies, which prepare students to undertake a PGCE. This is one facet of the work of a School of Education that offers undergraduate and Masters level programmes across a broad range of areas including Early Childhood, Education Studies, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), Youth Work, Community Engagement, Social Justice, Leadership and Management and Special Educational Needs Disabilities and Inclusion.

In September 2023, the first Rosalind Hollis Professor of Education for Social Justice was appointed. This post recognises a past graduate of the University, who gave a generous bequest from her estate. Rosalind G. Hollis (1931 – 2021) studied Mathematics at the University of Hull, undertaking teaching practice at Hunmanby Hall Methodist Boarding School in Filey in her final year. Throughout her adult life she was involved in work with children through both teaching and volunteering, authoring a dozen textbooks on Maths education.

In order to celebrate our history and heritage in the field of Education, the University is granting the award of Honorary Bachelor of Education to those who attained a Certificate in Education from the University of Hull in the 1980s and earlier. These students would, in later times, have been awarded a full undergraduate degree, and we recognise and celebrate their studies and subsequent achievements. Those receiving an honorary degree have variously made significant and sustained contributions to their communities, to schools and settings and to industry in the UK and around the world during the past six decades.