A DEVOTED advocate of the rights of people with learning difficulties is stepping down.

Dr Kate Schnelling, 62, has retired as deputy head teacher at Mabel Pritchard School following a career aiding youngsters with special needs that spanned four decades.

Staff and students at the Blackbird Leys special school in Cuddesdon Way gathered for an emotional farewell yesterday afternoon, coinciding with the end of term.

Dr Schnelling, who lives in Summertown, said: “It’s mixed feelings. I have got people coming over to give me presents and then crying at me.”

In the 1970s she took a job in Borough Court Hospital after moving to Reading and found herself working with children with special needs.

She went on to hold several teaching roles and helped to set up Oxfordshire’s Family Nurturing Network, which harmonises the families of children with behavioural problems.

After moving to Mabel Pritchard in January 2001 she was surprised to meet pupils she had last met as babies, through her work as a pre-school teacher counsellor for Oxfordshire County Council in the late 1990s.

She said: “I knew the children from when they were born. It was strange to come here and suddenly see the children I used to visit at 10 or 11, and lovely to reconnect with everybody. That’s why I am so close to the families in Blackbird Leys.”

“The challenges of people with learning difficulties is understanding what the parents have been through.”

Highlights of her time at Mabel Pritchard, which has 82 children aged two to 19 on its roll, have included setting up the sixth form and getting children involved in the Trax and Farmability work projects.

She has two grown-up sons, Samuel, 28, who is training to be a Rabbi, and Isaac, 25, an engineer.