DEDICATED primary school teacher Stewart Smith has rung the class bell for the last time after retiring from his 45-year career in education.

The 66-year-old, who has been working one-to one with children at Liden Primary School for the past nine years, helping youngsters overcome barriers to reading, has been a familiar face for pupils across the region.

"We had a celebration on Saturday when lots of colleagues and parents and teaching assistants I had known came along," he said.

"I have been working in education for 45 years and retired from leadership about 10 years ago."

During his teaching career Stewart's motivation was ensuring all pupils made good progress, and he particularly enjoyed special needs support.

He also worked at promoting sport in school, with notable success in rugby, cricket and gymnastics, and the keen parent involvement in rugby led to the foundation of the Wanborough Vets.

Although he will begin his retirement with a holiday, Stewart will continue to coach sport until his parent helper becomes qualified.

He said: "We're going away in the summer holidays but I'm not planning anything further than that.

"Although I'm retiring from classroom teaching, I still have 87 gymnasts at Stanford in the Vale to coach until my parent helper becomes qualified."

Stewart moved to Swindon in 1981, to become headteacher of Wanborough Primary School after teaching in Oxfordshire, and oversaw the growth and development of the school.

All three of Stewart's children, Katy, Robin and Daniel, attended Wanborough primary while for the first few years, his wife was the secretary.

He said: "Wanborough school building was antiquated, with a block of outside toilets and one class being housed in a hut.

"At the end of the first term school had to be closed due to the extreme wintry conditions and the toilets being frozen solid. Despite the old building the school thrived.

"When I started as headteacher there were just 80 children on roll. The school soon outgrew the old building and plans were put in place for a new school, which eventually opened in 1995.

"However, before it opened mobile classrooms were installed to cope with the large number of pupils."

During his time at Wanborough Stewart was also seconded to Ofsted for a year and carried out inspections all over the country.

During 1999 and 2000 he was also seconded to fill the vacancy of headteacher at Mountford Manor School, where he conjoined the infant and junior schools.

He also stepped in at short notice to help turn around Seven Fields School in 2004 when it was put into special measures Following his retirement from Wanborough in 2004, Stewart began working with children in Pupil Referral Units at Liden and Pinehurst.

In July 2004 his contribution to education was recognised with an invitation to Highgrove to meet Prince Charles and other educationalists.

Stewart now plans to take a step back from education, but intends to continue to be involved in the industry by taking up voluntary roles at other local schools as a governor and gymnastics coach.