Pauline Perry, Baroness Perry of Southwark (born Pauline Welch on 15 October 1931) is an educationalist, a Conservative politician and a member of the British House of Lords. She was Chief Inspector of Schools in England.
Perry was educated at Wolverhampton Girls' High School and Girton College, Cambridge. In 1952 she married Oxford University lecturer George Perry, and had three sons and a daughter (Christopher, Timothy, Simon and Hilary). She became a teacher and philosophy lecturer, working in England, Canada and the United States.
In 1970, Perry joined HM Inspectorate at the Department of Education and Science, and was appointed Chief Inspector of Schools in 1981. In 1986 she became Vice-Chancellor of South Bank Polytechnic, and serving during its transition to a university became the first woman in history to run a British university. She subsequently held other roles in higher education, including pro-chancellor of the University of Surrey and President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.
She has also been active in the Southwark Cathedral and Church of England community and the City of London. She was appointed chair of the review group examining the operation of the Crown Appointment Commission, the body which nominate Diocesan Bishops.
Perry was awarded the Freedom of the City of London in 1991 and became a life peer as The Right Honourable Baroness Perry of Southwark, of Charlbury in the County of Oxfordshire the same year. She sits on the Conservative Party benches. She was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2003-2005 and chaired the Working Party on the Ethics of research involving animals[1] (2003-2005) Chair, Commission on Secondary Reorganisation for the London Borough of Hammersmoith and Fulham, Chair, Commission on Academies and Free Schools in the London Borough of Wandsworth.
She was the co-chair of The Conservatives Public Services Commission which reported in 2007.
She was appointed a Conservative Party Whip in the Lords in January 2011.