RICHARD Handover, the new chairman of the Adult Learning Inspectorate, clearly remembers the simple put-down which ended his commitment to an unremarkable academic career. “Handover,” a teacher told him, “you will be one of the great failures.”

At 55, he is chief executive of WH Smith and getting by reasonably well for a man who left his public school with a single O-level in geography.

The teacher’s comment was “a wake-up call”, he said, which made him decide that he did not want to continue in education.

The learning which has advanced his career since he started with the company as a newspaper delivery boy was provided almost entirely by his employer, including the time the firm sent him on an MBA (Master of Business Administration) course in Canada in 1982.

“I thought this was fantastic,” he said, “because it was an interactive process, not just regurgitating facts on paper.”

He shares the Institute of Directors’ concern about the fact that the education system has produced a surplus of people with qualifications, and a high proportion of graduates by international standards, and yet there remains a skills deficit so severe that it affects the UK’s competitiveness overseas.

So what is the over-arching missing ingredient which needs to be added to the minds of today’s workforce? Simple, says Mr Handover: “You need to know how to work with other people.”

Finding a way of tweaking the inspection process so that it assesses the successful teaching of such skills could provide a complicated challenge and Mr Handover will not be drawn on how this can be achieved so soon after his appointment. But he knows first-hand how important they are.

As someone who sees himself as a hands-on man, he says he knows how to get on with people and work in a team - qualities which were instilled on the rugby field during his school days.

He was born in South Africa and moved to England with his mother after his parents divorced. He is aware that his own background, as the son of a businessman and the beneficiary of a private education, will have given him a self-confidence often lacking in those who have “failed” in state schools.

Mr Handover says such social confidence is something that needs to be encouraged by the inspection process if the balance between qualifications and skills is going to be addressed.

The ALI’s remit already extends from colleges through to government-funded workplace training. But he feels that its reach will need to be extended into schools if the 14-plus approach to vocational training is to be synchronised with the work already happening outside compulsory education.

“Business has an important role to play in the education agenda,” he said. “I believe business should be involved much earlier in the process of establishing what the education agenda should look like. But it should not dictate the process.”

Mr Handover has been chief executive at WH Smith since 1997, having previously headed a number of the company’s businesses, including Our Price record shops and WH Smith News.

At the ALI he replaces Nick Reilly, chairman of Vauxhall Motors, who was forced to step down because of overseas business commitments.

The inspectorate is responsible for inspecting government-funded work-based training and all post-19 provision in colleges, adult and community education, prison education and training under the New Deal.