It’s time to tell the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Birmingham to get the plastic glasses in for this year’s Association of Colleges’ conference.

If watching a bunch of principals scratching each others’ eyes out is your idea of entertainment, this could be the event for you.

After getting its fingers burnt with commercial activities and failing to appoint a new chief executive, the AoC may have been hoping the Birmingham get-together would be a chance to draw a line under things.

One board member tells me there is disquiet among his colleagues about the state the AoC has got itself into - and he’s not convinced its plans, which include the appointment of a president and restructuring the board, have been thorough enough to impress members.

He suggests that simply rearranging the suits around the top table won’t be enough to convince the average principal, who would have been hoping for something a little more visionary.

“We’ll be eaten alive in Birmingham,” he says.