Mr Seber, 47, an Oxford graduate and former secondary teacher, has already spent 15 years with Hampshire. He was seconded to neighbouring Portsmouth City Council earlier this year, following the departure of its chief education officer Anna Lawson after a vote of no confidence from headteachers.

Greg Wilkinson (right) has left the Audit Commission on being elected to Hammersmith and Fulham Council in London as a Labour councillor. Mr Wilkinson, who as the commission’s associate director of local government spent a great deal of time on education spending, has already landed a post where he can use his expertise. He has become Hammersmith and Fulham’s assistant deputy for education - roughly equivalent, in the council’s new set-up, to being vice-chair of the education committee. (Hammersmith and Fulham Council has cast aside the old committee structure: the Leader is now the Mayor and chairs a board of six deputies.) Mr Wilkinson has joined Anderson Consulting as a strategy consultant in the firm’s Government Services Unit, which should add greatly to his income from the council: pound;7,500 in expenses as a councillor, pound;10,000 salary as an assistant deputy.

Clive Booth, chairman of the Teacher Training Agency, has been appointed to the part-time post of chairman of the Review Body for Nursing Staff, Midwives, Health Visitors and Professions Allied to Medicine. Professor Booth, who also chairs the multimedia education information company ECCTIS 2000, was until recently vice-chancellor of Oxford Brookes University.

Tony Garwood has been appointed headteacher of Marina High School, which has been on special measures since 1996 and is one of two secondary schools to be included in Brighton and Hove’s education action zone.

For the past two years, he has been head of Islington Green school in London, where the number of pupils getting five A to C grades at GCSE has risen and is now in the top 25 per cent of schools with similar intake. Mr Garwood is reported to have clashed with Islington teachers who have resisted the introduction of streaming. But he denies that he is leaving for this reason.

Mr Garwood has strong links with Brighton, having lived there since he was appointed deputy head of Varndean school in 1993.

Patrick Webb has become general secretary of the Association of Workers for Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties. He is the principal of the Harmeny Education Trust, a charity that runs Harmeny school, a residential school for boys and girls with emotional and behavioural difficulties grant-aided by the Scottish Office in Balerno, Edinburgh.

Cambridge Regional College has appointed James Hampton as its first director of teaching and learning in further education. Mr Hampton is head of education and teacher training at Bournemouth and Poole College, where he oversees a broad range of in-house, outreach and franchised programmes, including the BA and Certificate in Education.

He trained as a physics teacher and taught for some years in a comprehensive before moving to further education 16 years ago.

Linda Kiernan has been appointed headteacher of St John of Jerusalem, a CoE primary school in Hackney, east London. Ms Kiernan is currently head of Drayton Park primary school, Islington.