Seventy years after leaving Southlands Teacher Training College in Wimbledon, 89 year old Eileen Jakes, of Ely, has been awarded an honorary degree by Roehampton University.
The university made awards to over 4,000 teachers who qualified before the training became degree accredited, in recognition of their studies and their life time working in education.
Eileen passed her finals in 1947 in a Croydon school with a bomb damaged playground and fifty children in the class.
Eileen travelled to The Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank of the River Thames in London, for the ceremony.
The ceremony was presided over by chancellor and children’s author Jacqueline Wilson, who presented Eileen with her Batchelor of Education.
During her teaching career Eileen taught in schools in Willingham, Histon, Luton and Bearsted in Kent.
But most local people will remember her from her time in Stretham school during the 1970s and 80s.
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