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" in an honorary degree ceremony.

Jan and Ian Ball, who live in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, attended Shoreditch College between 1969 and 1974. They both graduated with teaching certificates but have now been awarded honorary bachelors of education by Brunel University, as it is now known. Mrs. Ball, 72, said it was "not expected at all" and a day "we never thought would happen".

When they began their training, degrees were not available, Mrs. Ball said. The qualification "did not hold us back in any way," but meant they were paid less than people with degrees, she added. She started her training in 1971. Mr. Ball, 74, started his in 1969, and they got married in March 1973.

After graduation, Mrs. Ball, an English teacher, eventually became the deputy head at Bushey Hall School, now Grange Academy, in Hertfordshire, and her husband was a design technology teacher in Harrow. They eventually moved to Great Barford, Bedfordshire, and lived there for 13 years, before recently relocating to St Neots.

Mrs. Ball said: "I was not expecting this upgrade at all, but we've been recognized for our services to education." She said it had all been "a strange, but wonderful turn of events". "We never thought it would happen."

Their children, Helen Maberly and Michael Ball, witnessed their parents' second graduation. "The ceremony was very moving and paid tribute to our years of teaching," Mrs. Ball said. The event was especially poignant, as the couple were the first from their families to go to college. She said: "How very proud would they [our parents] have been to have seen us today?