An elderly gentleman inspector of large girth and ruddy complexion once fell asleep on the back row in my science lab. One of the Year 8 lads rushed up to the front, interrupting my carefully-prepared (for once) spiel, to inform me that "that man on our bench is making snoring noises, Sir!" Indeed he was. I later discovered that he'd been staying at the Falcon Hotel in Bude, which has an excellent bar at which he'd been liberally indulging himself the night before.

Ofsted has been an unmitigated disaster. There's even a suspicion that inspectors were deliberately downgrading schools that were showing reluctance to become academies in order to pressurise them to do so. Teachers don't need constant threats of no-notice inspectorial swoops and publicly-judgemental reporting. They need critical-friend support. In the ILEA we had excellent teams of advisory teachers of proven accomplishment, experts in your subject area, not just any old Tom, Dick or Harry ex-teacher. They would observe lessons, look at the children's work and offer friendly support, advice - and criticism. A proper professional collaboration, supported by a fairly hands-off inspection regime that you'd have been unlucky to encounter more than once or twice during your career. Not up Thatcher's alley at all, of course. Teachers needed beating up and she had just the handbag for it.