For a civil servant embroiled in theA-level crisis, the Year 8 bottom set for science at a Worksop comprehensive is a welcome haven. “It’s been a relief to be here,” says David Normington, education’s most senior mandarin, who is on a two-day visit to Valley school in Nottinghamshire as part of a programme in which civil servants shadow headteachers and vice versa.

He has been at the 1,600-pupil comprehensive since 7.30am and, after a tour of the buildings, he joins 12-year-old Keiron Marsh in the bottom science set. The set has 13 special needs pupils in a class of 27. The permanent secretary at the Department for Education and Skills is full of admiration. “What a hard job it is being a teacher. Some of the pupils have difficulty concentrating for more than five minutes. It takes about 10 minutes just to settle them down. You have to be always on the ball to keep their attention.”

By the end of the morning with Keiron (German, science and ICT), Mr Normington announces: “I’m absolutely exhausted. I’d forgotten how tiring it is to be a pupil. A few of them were putting their heads on the desk. I knew how they felt.”

He is in the school at the invitation of the Valley’s headteacher Brian Rossiter, and their backgrounds are certainly different: Mr Normington, the 50-year-old career civil servant, was educated at grammar school and Oxford and earns pound;140,000 a year; Mr Rossiter, 47, is a product of a comprehensive and northern-university education, a former science teacher who’s worked his way to the top of his profession and banks an annual salary less than half that of the Whitehall man’s.

Mr Rossiter approached the man from the ministry after hearing him outline his plans for civil servants to shadow heads at the Secondary Heads Association conference earlier this year. The speech was a tricky one, delivered at a time when heads were threatening to block government proposals for performance pay. But Mr Normington’s charm prevailed. He may be known as the “smiling assassin” to colleagues who have watched his smooth rise through the ranks, but, among heads, he has earned a reputation as a good listener. He says he is usually in a school for no more than two hours, and that is not long enough.

So what has Valley done to warrant an extended visit? “I just took the first offer that came along,” says the permanent secretary. By chance, he arrived in a school which the head hesitates to call “bog standard” although that is what others might call it. It is set in former mining country on the outskirts of Worksop, where 3,500 jobs were lost last year. Its GCSE scores are impressive for a cohort that spans the ability range: this year 45.5 per cent achieved five A*-C grades, just below the national average and up from 41 per cent last year. The figure has been rising steadily and discipline is strong, but it is unlikely the DfES spin doctors would have chosen a flat-roofed Fifties building with leaking windows, rotting walls and temporary huts for an official visit.

Mr Normington is dismayed by the state of the building. “They have a plan for rebuilding and they have put a lot of effort into painting the inside, but it is so unsuitable and so crammed in,” he says.

The cramped site reinforces the need for discipline and order. At lunchtime, the head stations himself in front of a tide of hungry pupils flowing towards the dining room. “I’m slowing them down. It makes it easier for the dinner supervisors,” he explains in answer to Mr Normington’s question.

Then the two go off to the canteen and the man from Whitehall looks delighted to secure a cheese baguette. But, as he is about to collapse gratefully into a chair in the head’s study, Mr Rossiter tells him he will have to wait. If he is shadowing the head, he must join him on a lunch-hour patrol of the streets surrounding the school to check how pupils are behaving. Some have their parents’ permission to go home for lunch, but instead visit the chip shop and the supermarket. There have been complaints from local residents about litter. Outside in the corridor, they meet Marion, a cleaner, whose current priority is removing graffiti from the toilet walls. “A new one today,” she says cheerfully. “Someone’s been using glue sticks. It needs a scraper to get it off.”

At the gates, Chris, one of the dinner supervisors, has just turned away a boy who has been excluded from another school. She is using her two-way radio to warn a colleague at the next gate that he is trying to get in but she is not too busy to tell Mr Normington that, much as she loves her job, she needs a pay rise. “What do you earn?” asks the permanent secretary. The answer is just over pound;21 a week for an hour a day.

Down by the chip shop, the alternative lunch hour is in full swing. Mr Rossiter tackles a boy emptying his pop bottle on to the pavement and a group lounging on the wall. Mr Normington says he is struck by the amount of time spent “making sure that the discipline and behaviour framework is under control; it is a well-behaved, orderly school. One look from the head does the trick. But you can’t leave behaviour to chance. There is a constant need to reinforce it.”

Back at school, a group of former pupils and pupils from other schools have gathered outside the gates. The head goes over to disperse them before returning to his study. The permanent secretary finally gets his sandwich. The afternoon’s meetings offer useful insights for a mandarin researching the effects of government policies on life at the chalkface. First, there is a discussion about a pupil permanently excluded from another school who is due to be admitted to Valley. Would therapeutic work in a pupil referral unit ease the child’s integration into school? “Yes,” says the head dryly, with a glance at Mr Normington, “but it is full.” The Government has promised that all permanently excluded pupils will receive full-time education from this term. Valley will receive money for extra staffing but has to find the right person to spend it on.

Two local education authority officials arrive to discuss the rebuilding of the school under the private finance initiative. “We’re waiting for the DfES guidelines,” is their opening remark. “When are they due out?” asks Mr Rossiter. “Yesterday,” is the reply. The head of the offending department smiles.

The issue Mr Rossiter is most anxious to press home to the captive permanent secretary is the amount of bureaucracy in schools. Mr Normington, Sir Humphrey-like, anticipates him and asks what his department can do to cut red tape and workload. The head points out that he has already filled in 11 long official forms and the term is only three weeks old. They discuss a single database that could be shared by all official education bodies: a survey of teachers’ pay from the School Teachers’ Review Body is the latest target for Mr Rossiter’s ire.

After two days, the head believes the experience has been positive. “It was a warts-and-all visit. The aim was to see a normal school with teachers working to deliver government policy. I don’t want to be a whinger but to look for solutions to intractable problems. We were able to have discussions which weren’t defensive. We argued the toss about the upper pay spine (how senior teachers will be rewarded under the performance pay scheme).”

Back in Whitehall, Mr Normington reflects on his visit. “It’s a school that is really trying and has such ambition. I came back cheered up. I saw a mirror image of a lot of things we are discussing at national level. I should have been disappointed if I hadn’t. It has a major PFI project. It is applying to become a specialist school. It is concerned about behaviour, and they are talking about raising aspiration.

“I don’t often get that close to a school. The intensity of what a teacher does is brought home to me. With very little break you move from one group to another. They are completely different and you need to be prepared. You have to keep changing pace, style, content. It reminds me how exhausting it must get.”

So will the visit affect decision-making in the department? “I would not point to one thing that is going to happen, but I have a set of reference points which can be used as we discuss policy development. I have come away with copies of the 11 requests for information and I shall be using these to challenge those who ask what is the problem with bureaucracy.”

Most important, perhaps, he has left instructions that “next time we do something daft”, the school must send him an email. It is an invitation Mr Rossiter intends to accept.