The first thing David Hutchings did when he was appointed specialist education press officer for Devon, in anticipation of a mixed Ofsted report earlier this year, was to organise a meet-the-press session for his bosses. In walks Andy Cooper, editor of The North Devon Journal, who takes one look at Tony Smith, the director of education for the county, and says: “You used to coach me at football when I was at school in Northampton.”

Smith, a Cambridge Blue at soccer, did indeed coach school teams during the seven years he taught geography. He also played as a semi-professional until he was 30. After Saturday morning school matches, he’d turn out for the likes of Newport Pagnell, Trowbridge, then in the Southern Premier Division, and Devizes. But evening matches in Merthyr Tydfil proved too time-consuming for a young man learning a new job. Yet it has given him an understanding of the pressures facing teachers young and old.

“I can remember going to bed for the first two or three weeks at eight o’clock in the evening,” he recalls.“I’d just had it.”

But being director of education in a large shire county is also demanding and brings its own challenges. Not least, in Devon’s case, the annual headache of school transport. “Not the bane of my life, but not far off,” says Smith, who joined the authority in 1989. He took over as director in 1998 when local government was reorganised. Now he faces the prospect of reconstituting a fleet of coaches once run by the authority - this time to ensure that the private contractors keep their prices competitive - important when transport consumes6 per cent of your total budget.

His other big worry is recruiting teachers over the next few years. “A lot of people who train in Devon stay on. The ageing profile of the teaching profession is a national problem, but our situation is acute: the average age of teachers here is in the high forties.”

That’s not his only recruitment problem. For the past 10 years finding the staff to run the administration has been a headache. Since the number of local education authorities leapt from 74 in 1988 to today’s 151, it has created many more opportunities. And the rise in teacher salaries means a secondary head would probably only consider a deputy chief education officer’s post. Fourth-tier officers are paid about the same as heads of small primary schools: pound;34-35,000. So, he asks, where do you recruit from? But, Smith says, it’s not just about money.

“Since opting out, the job has become more difficult, less certain and that hasn’t changed since the election of Labour in 1997. Inevitably the private sector comes to play a bigger role.”

And therein lie more problems. “One of my worries about privatisation is that I can see companies cherrypicking, offering services to Exeter schools, Newton Abbott schools and down the A38 corridor. But what price Hartland (a remote town of 1,600 on the north coast)? At the moment, we subsidise Hartland by subsuming the travelling expenses within the overall cost of providing for other schools. But will the existence of the private sector allow that to continue?” He cites last year’s flooding which left one Okehampton school struggling to replace its carpets.“The nearest contractor was 25 miles away. He didn’t want to come out. So what price a history adviser under such circumstances?

“We must learn to compete with others. But that must be on a level playing field and we must ensure that the hindmost are protected - they are the small rural schools, secondary as well as primary.”

Ofsted criticisms of the authority leave him rather cold. The inspectors said that while Devon was good at helping schools in difficulties, its antennae did not pick up problems early enough.

“Ofsted came at a time when three schools had gone into serious weaknesses within a term. Their conclusion was an odd one, I thought. One of Ofsted’s weaknesses is that its snapshots provide a limited view. We’ve now got two special measures schools out of 373, and nine with serious weaknesses, well below the national average. One authority which shall remain nameless was awarded beacon status for school improvement, yet it had more schools in special measures and serious weaknesses, which is interesting. I’m proud of our record.”

Talking to Smith, you can’t forget you are talking to a geography specialist. We are discussing the contrast in size between Devon’s primary schools (Membury has only 24 pupils) and its secondaries (Exmouth has 2,300 students). Suddenly he’s expounding Christaller’s theory of settlements.“Our pattern of secondary education reflects where the local market towns are. The only village with a secondary school is Chulmleigh.”

The large secondary schools in Devon bring their own management problems.

“The heads have to be organisers of a major institution with a budget of pound;5m. You can’t know every pupil’s name. And you can’t manage by charisma. You’ve got to manage by systems, by delegation, by dividing things up into smaller units, manageable sizes for you and the pupils.”

Given that so much money in Devon goes on transport and subsidising small schools, what would he spend the money on were an educational lottery to give him the chance to right a few wrongs. His answer is unequivocal.“I would put the money into buildings. We’ve still got a few dozen huts that were put up in 1947, ostensibly for 10 years. We still have 28 per cent of our youngsters in temporary buildings, which is not good.

“I can’t think of any other branch of life that deals with temporary accommodation in that way. If it is part of public service mentality, then it ought not to be.”

Smith, an athletic-looking 46, obviously enjoys his job. He lives in Teignmouth in a house overlooking the sea and still plays cricket for a local side. He’s talking about Ofsted and winning the hearts and minds of politicans to new ideas, but he could be talking about his own situation. “There is a certain pace of life in Devon. Things move more slowly but they do last.”