Teaching couple preparing to hang up mortar boards after almost 40 years

THEY started their careers together more than 40 years ago when they were introduced at teaching college in Birmingham.

Now, some four decades later, husband and wife team Delia and David Tickner are preparing hang up their mortar boards together, working just yards away from one another at schools in Soham.

Drama teacher David, 61, started at Soham Village College as an English teacher in 1973 while wife Delia started work a year later at the Church of England Primary School, now St Andrew’s School, just a few yards away.

Despite moving to several schools in the meantime and giving birth to two sons, Delia, 59, returned to teach at St Andrew’s and the couple are now planning to retire with a combined total of almost 80 years in teaching.

David, who has been at Soham Village College all of his career, said: “We met during a production of The Hobbit at teaching college, I was playing a dwarf and Delia was one of the props team.

“We were married little more than a year later, moved down to Soham together and the rest is history.”

David was instrumental in bringing drama to the village college in the 1990s and said that, despite starting out with a disused science block for a studio, he ended up with the best classroom at the school in the shape of the new multi-million pound theatre.

Delia said: “We are looking forward to spending a bit more time together and to our son’s wedding in August. I will miss a lot of my pupils but I certainly won’t miss the paperwork!”