Former teachers receive honorary doctorates from Brunel University

A couple who met and married at a teacher training college in the 1970s have returned to their former alma mater to have their qualifications ‘upgraded’ at an honorary doctorate ceremony.

Jan and Ian Ball, who live in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, attended Shoreditch College between 1969 and 1974.

They both graduated with a teaching qualification, but have now received an honorary Bachelor of Education from Brunel University, as the university is now known.

Mrs Ball, 72, said it was “completely unexpected” and a day “we never thought would happen”.

When they started their training, there were no degrees available, Ms. Ball said.

The qualification “didn’t hold us back in any way” but it did mean they were paid less than those with a degree, she added.

She began her training in 1971. Mr Ball, 74, began his in 1969 and they married in March 1973.

After graduating, Mrs Ball, an English teacher, became deputy headmaster of Bushey Hall School (now Grange Academy) in Hertfordshire. Her husband was a design technology teacher at Harrow.

They eventually moved to Great Barford, Bedfordshire, and lived there for 13 years, before recently moving to St Neots.

Ms Ball said: “I didn’t expect this upgrade at all, but we are being recognised for our services to education.”

She said it was all “a strange, but beautiful turn of events.”

“We never thought it would happen.”

Their children, Helen Maberly and Michael Ball, attended their second graduation ceremony.

“The ceremony was very moving and a tribute to our years of teaching,” said Ms Ball.

The event was especially poignant because the couple were the first in their family to attend university.

She said, “How proud would they (our parents) have been if they had seen us today?”