of their boss

IT is not just teachers who will breathe a sigh of relief at the departure of Chris Woodhead, the chief inspector of schools. Most of the thousands of inspectors who go into schools week after week on behalf of OFSTED will also raise a silent cheer.

How can you persuade a school that inspectors, staff,

governors and parets are on the same side when all that most of them can remember is that Mr Woodhead had said there were 15,000 incompetent teachers who should be sacked?

Teachers and inspectors alike were starting to believe Mr Woodhead was more a spokesman for his own increasingly

isolated views, rather than for what was actually happening in our schools.

A school inspector