Mr Woodhead's day began at around 7am. I was invited to attend his second meeting of the day, with the directors of the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), which he runs.

Topics discussed included the cost of inspections, the introduction of a "light-touch" inspection for schools whose results had previously been positive and the anticipated number of failing schools (estimated at 5%).

Also on the agenda were visits planned for the forthcoming month, including a trip to Norway and contacts with inspectors in Austria, Greece and Holland, and the need to educate the public regarding 'value added' in schools.

Peter Mortimer's highly-acclaimed book condemning the Ofsted policy of 'naming and shaming' failing schools was briefly discussed, but much more was made of the leader in The Times which supported Ofsted's policy - I would have preferred to hear a real discussion of the points made by Peter Mortimer.

'It's the evenings,' he yawned

Next it was off to the 'Greycoat Hospital' School in Westminster, where Mr Woodhead was delivering a paper to the conference of headteachers of grant maintained schools. In the taxi, he stifled a yawn.

"Please excuse me. It's the evenings, you know."

Yes, Mr Woodhead, most teachers do know about "the evenings" but our work involves preparation, marking, writing reports and meeting parents, not attending dinners.

I joined the headteachers in the audience, along with the chief inspector's press and private secretaries. His paper raised two main points: the independence of schools and the problems of teacher recruitment.

Mr Woodhead felt that standards had to be raised from inside the school and not by the 'string pulling' of the local education authority. Birmingham was cited as believing that schools cannot be expected to raise standards without the help of the LEA, a point with which he did not agree.

Teacher shortage

He went on to speak about the importance of the headteacher's personal vision for improving schools.

The issue of recruitment once again focused on the role of the headteacher and the need for training. Headteachers were expected to have agile minds and quick responses (able to give an immediate answer to the question: "Was Hamlet mad?").

Mr Woodhead said the shortage of teachers in science, mathematics and modern languages needed to be addressed at A level, before prospective teachers began to think about degree subjects.

The importance lay in classroom teaching: red tape, papers, meetings and flavour-of-the-month jargon should all be reduced to a minimum to give importance to classroom teaching.

The session ended with questions, and once again Mr Woodhead made himself very accessible to the delegates, just as he had on Any Questions?

'Failing' school

After a quick sandwich lunch we were off again, to a 'failing' school threatened with closure by the LEA. We were met at the school gates by several Year 11 boys, immaculately dressed and well versed in courtesy.

After a tour of the school we attended a meeting with the headteacher and governors, who had invited the chief inspector to visit the school and make his own judgement. Mr Woodhead said he was unable to influence decisions made by the LEA but was impressed with his reception at the school. I too was impressed, particularly by the attitude of the students. I was disappointed, however, that little of the pupils' work was on display except in the art department.

During the visit I was questioned about class sizes in my own school. In Year 9 we have classes of up to 37 - "Rather large, aren't they?" he observed - yet teachers receive no productivity bonus for the extra marking, parents to see, reports to write and so on.

We returned to Alexandra House at 4.30pm in time for yet another meeting. Mr Woodhead was going on to a dinner at 7.30 which was expected to finish at 10pm.