POPULAR headteacher Paul Kohn is to retire this summer after 23 years of dedicated service at Liden Primary School in Swindon.

Mr Kohn, 58,oversaw the multi-million pound project to merge the infant and junior schools in an improved building.

But now he has decided to retire from the profession he loves to take on new challenges and allow someone else to manage the school.

Mr Kohn, a father-of-three, said: “It has been an inspiring time and I’ve loved my years here.

“It is going to be quite a hard break but it’s time for a change for both me and the school.

“Liden has changed physically completely and it has changed in nature as well because education has changed in that time a great deal.

“The school has great prospects for the future.”

Mr Kohn, who lives in Oakhurst, started teaching in 1972 at a comprehensive school in West Bromwich but left after two years to travel abroad.

His adventures included working in Israel in a factory and on a kibbutz, farming in Switzerland for five months and working in a supermarket in Freiberg, Germany, for six months.

He returned to England in 1976 and taught at a comprehensive school in London and primary schools in Kent and West Sussex.

He was then employed by the Service Children’s Education Authority, teaching for a total of seven years at schools in Hong Kong and Wolfenbüttel in West Germany.

Mr Kohn was appointed deputy head at Liden Junior School in 1987. In 1993, after six months as acting head, he then became the headteacher.

Due to the many young families in Liden in the 1970s and 1980s, both the infant and junior schools had classrooms in portable buildings, but numbers reduced towards the end of the 1990s.

After infant school head Caroline Maddox left in 1997, the council secured a £3.5m Government loan to merge the schools in an improved building on the infant site and convert the old junior school building for the Chalet School. Mr Kohn moved the staff and pupils three times during the work between 1999 and 2001.

He was then appointed headteacher of the newly-merged primary school in 1999.

Mr Kohn will officially retire at the end of the academic year on July 23 and plans to spend a few months travelling in a motor home before tackling an Open University degree.

The current deputy head, Vikki Marsh-Ballard, will become the new headteacher and Andy Wilson will be the new deputy.