Staff of the girls’ grammar she attended as a pupil in Sheffield were key role models, as she explained to Professor Peter Ribbins of Birmingham University in a recently published compilation of conversations with heads.

“They showed us that women could be clever and successful . . . at the time we found it vaguely risible but in retrospect they were right. I remember the headmistress saying to us . . . ‘You have all had a good education. I do not expect any of you to get married before you are 30. You owe it to society to put back what you have been given’.”

Sue Benton did not take all this advice. “I had my children very young, ” she told Peter Ribbins. “This had some advantages. I did not have a career which was interrupted. I was able to start a normal career pattern, but later. And go for the top without time out.”

The innovative foundation studies department at Bicester School in Oxfordshire, where Sue Benton eventually became head of department, convinced her of the importance of teamwork and of developing skills in children which would stand them in good stead later.

“The work we did amounted to a unique piece of curriculum development . . . probably something that could not happen now because of the constraints of the national curriculum. We were teaching across the range of subjects. We had to work as a team in which everybody was dependent on everybody else for developing the teaching materials.

“People got used to preparing materials and putting them on the table for discussion and having other people pull them about and not feel offended. We also got used to working together and sharing ideas. It was a department where there was always somebody piloting something, where there was a strong educational philosophy.”

In her penultimate year at Bicester, she obtained one of the last year-long secondments to do an MSc in educational management at Oxford. “I took as my research theme . . . new heads and how they changed their schools. I was particularly interested in the management of change . . . I could see this was going to become more and more important in schools.

“It was enormously valuable being part of a group of 14 of us on the course that year . . . I am very sad that the new funding arrangements have meant the virtual disappearance of such opportunities for full-time secondment.”

Sue Benton’s interview, from which these quotes are taken, appears in Headship Matters by Peter Ribbins and Michael Marland, Pitman, Pounds 14.95. Turning Points is a regular column focusing on key moments in career development. If you want to share an important influence or decision in your professional life, write to Bob Doe, The TES, Admiral House, 66-68 East Smithfield, London E1 9XY.