This week: Sir Michael Wilshaw

It seems you can barely open a newspaper these days without seeing the face of Her Majesty’s chief inspector of schools looking back at you. Since taking up his role at the helm of Ofsted, Sir Michael has been a near permanent fixture in the media, as a result of both the raft of changes he has made and a gift for media-friendly one-liners about Clint Eastwood.

But heads and teachers across the country could have been forgiven for thinking that, for the summer holidays at least, they would be spared the sight of Sir Michael’s levelling stare over their Corn Flakes. How wrong they were.

Her Majesty’s chief inspector popped up in the most unlikely of places last week by appearing on daytime TV favourite Homes Under the Hammer. The programme was a rerun from 2010, when Sir Michael was still head of Mossbourne Community Academy in East London, but it would have still put the frighteners on many a teacher desperately trying not to think about school in the final days of their summer holidays.

The episode featured the chief inspector snapping up a Georgian cottage in Greenwich, South London, and turning it into his dream home. And those teachers who weren’t scared into changing the channel at the first sight of Sir Michael’s face would have swiftly become embittered on seeing just how much the former head had his property valued at: a fist-gnawing #163;600,000. Just #163;250,00 more than he paid for it.

So, for terrifying teachers still in their pyjamas while simultaneously turning them green with envy, it is to the naughty step with you, Sir Michael.