‘Gone are the days of every school having to have a full complement of directly employed QTS teachers.’

Department for Education and Skills document on blue-skies thinking for workforce reform

November 14

‘Teaching is a vocation for me but it gets annoying when you can’t afford things in Asda.’

Lucinda Butwell, nursery teacher, Montrose primary, Leicester, on pay awards

October 17

‘Few issues in education arouse more passion and upset than planning school places.’

Office for Standards in Education inspectors in a report on admissions

October 3

‘Oh my God, I’m a teacher.’

Robbie Walker who is on the Teach First scheme, which places high-flying graduates in London schools

August 29

‘I just don’t see why the Government didn’t see all of this coming.’

Tim Dingle, head of The Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe, who realised a schools’ funding crisis was on the cards in April 2002

August 8

‘It’s like Boy Scouts collecting badges. One has to ask what the educational value of it is.’

Tony Little, headteacher of Eton College, on the GCSE

July 4

‘This has been a uniquely difficult year for school funding.’

David Miliband, schools minister, at the Secondary Heads Association summer conference, London

May 30

‘Show me a boy with a Nike arrow shaved into his misshapen bonce, and I will show you a pain in the ass.’

Teacher in TES online staffroom on how troublesome pupils can be spotted by their haircuts

May 2

‘We believe the Government has not thought through the implications of its changes for the neediest schools, such as those in inner London.’

Fiona Millar, Downing Street adviser and chair of governors at Gospel Oak primary, Camden

April 25

‘We are going to give the Government a bloody nose over Sats.’

Sue Caldwell, a National Union of Teachers’ conference delegate from Enfield, north London

February 21

‘The reason you put a book in front of a child is for the child to enjoy it, to learn to love reading. Books are not just there to be used as exercises.’

Michael Morpurgo, one of 80 children’s authors and illustrators, calling for an end to national tests in schools

January 24

‘There’s nothing more debilitating to the 14-19 curriculum than the use of the term “gold standard” for one particular area of the curriculum. None of us should use it again.’

Ken Boston, chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority