Martha Steedman

Died: March 3, 2015.

Martha Steedman, who has died aged 85, had a love and care for the young which took her from a school of barefoot children in the Indian state of Sikkim to headmistress of the elite girls' private school of St Leonards in St Andrews, Fife.

On the maternal side, her grandfather was the first Lord Maclay, the Glasgow shipowner and minister of shipping from 1916 to 1921 in Lloyd George's Government; Viscount Muirshiel, former Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland, was her uncle. It was a devout family for whom public service mattered more than their wealth.

Her mother Lilias Maclay was a medical missionary and a graduate of Glasgow University. Her father John Edmund Hamilton was fourteenth in an unbroken line of Presbyterian clergyman in Ireland, born in the north but brought up in the south. When at college he became deeply involved in the movement for north-south union. When his effigy was burned in the street he had to flee to Scotland, becoming a Church of Scotland minister in Edinburgh, and an unsuccessful Labour candidate for East Aberdeenshire.

Mrs Steedman recalled: "My mother and father were quite determined that I should go to Boroughmuir, the Edinburgh state school which was just round the corner from our house." However, Maclay pressure prevailed, and she was sent to the private St Denis School, Edinburgh. During the war she transferred to St Columba's School, Kilmacolm, which was near her Maclay grandfather at Duchal House. Her third school was Roedean in Sussex.

The Hamilton home in the capital was a cosmopolitan residence, with Sir Stafford Cripps a guest of the minister, and the minister's wife, the medical missionary, welcoming Indians and Africans. A history graduate of St Andrews University, Mrs Steedman resolved to fulfill her family's wishes by going forth as a missionary teacher.

She went out to Sikkim in the eastern Himalayas, near the border with Tibet, to teach in the Nepali Girls School, Darjeeling. In Kalimpong, a hill station, she was hostel superintendent before going to Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, to become principal of the Girls High School, with a roll of 750.

She learned to speak Nepali, remaining in India for 11 years until 1966. But her mother died and she had to return home because her father had to be looked after. She wanted to teach in a state school, but was told she would have to do further training, since her Cambridge education diploma was not acceptable. She did a year of deputation work, going round the churches, and then a diploma in adult education at Edinburgh.

"I was still looking towards India," she said, "and knew that it was time I took my mind off it, so I decided to do a doctorate on Africa, having already done a dissertation." She went out to study adult education in Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa, but when she returned home it was to be informed by an academic that he was not interested in anyone doing a doctorate on Africa.

She was appointed headmistress of St Leonards School in 1970, but acknowledged that her stewardship of the privileged conflicted with her father's fervent Labour beliefs. "When I was at Roedean I was the only socialist, I think, and I was not much of that. My father used to send me the Soviet News every week. The late Professor John P Mackintosh, the Labour MP, was a family friend. He wanted me to be the head of a comprehensive, but I couldn't even get started in the state system, let alone be a head."

In 1977, she married the distinguished Scottish architect Robert Steedman, who designed the masterly music school for St Leonards. She modernised St Leonards in many ways. Keen to introduce the pupils to foreign travel, she led an expedition to Sikkim in 1977, where she had helped to dig trenches to protect her pupils against the threat of Chinese invasion. In 1986, she and her husband took girls to China, when that country was cautious about foreign visitors.

She retired from St Leonards in 1988, and that year received the OBE in recognition of her selfless service to education both within her own school throughout the British Isles and the wider world. A previous award was from Sikkim, whose king had presented her with the Order of the Lotus and Thunderbolt for her services to his country.

Mrs Steedman was graceful and warm hearted, a delightful lady adored by her husband Robert and three stepchildren. She was respected by all in Scotland and abroad who were taught by her, and who had the honour of being her colleagues and her friends.

Lorn Macintyre