PRINCIPAL Patrick Hazlewood will say farewell to St John’s Academy in Marlborough tomorrow after 19 years at the helm.

But it’s not goodbye forever as Dr Hazlewood will remain chief executive of Excalibur Academies, a trust of academies including St John’s.

He said: “After 19 years it’s a very strange moment and you look at the long journey we’ve come on from being a split-site school, building a new school, right through to the outstanding Ofsted and you think ‘wow, what a journey that was’.

“For me personally it’s very sad, it’s like leaving a family. You build up a team of people over the years and there all your appointments but it’s the right time to go.”

In 2008 Dr Hazlewood oversaw the £25 million project to merge the lower school in Chopping Knife Lane onto the single site, already occupied by the Upper school.

He said: “The thing I’m most proud of is the new St John’s which took many hours of my life.

“I’m so proud of the outstanding Ofsted judgment and I’m so proud of the achievements of our students.

“Fundamentally, it’s just such a lovely place to work, surrounded by highly professional people who are committed to the development of the students.”

In September Nicky Edmondson will become the new principal having been a headteacher since 2007, first at Henry Box School in Witney before moving to Penair School in Truro, Cornwall in 2013.

In the interim period senior vice principal Miles Whittaker will lead the academy which is rated Outstanding in all areas.

“I think [Mrs Edmondson] is an excellent appointment. I think she is absolutely the right person to take St John’s onto the next steps.

“For me the exciting challenge is to make sure that all six academies in Excalibur develop to outstanding like St John’s has.

“St John’s has always been such an integral part of the development of my philosophy of how schools should be and so we have lots of exciting challenges ahead and the most important of those is embedding the concept of an international academy and what that really means for our pupils in the future.

“It’s about developing all through education so that pupils that start at an Excalibur primary automatically come through to an Excalibur secondary and their journey is a continuum so that what goes on between year six and seven feels the same as moving up a year in the same building.”