MR Fethney was a sight to behold. He would shoot out of his office like a missile, his long, black robes billowing and flapping behind him, ever alert for even the smallest misdemeanour.

Chewing gum in the corridor - get on the brass line. Tie round your head instead of round your neck - get on the brass line. Pushing and shoving in the dinner queue - get on the brass line.

The brass line was Mr Fethney's pride and joy. It was a strip of metal that ran from one end of the corridor outside his office to the other, bisecting the school's main reception area that led to the dinner hall and the science block on one side and the three-storey classroom block on the other.

This meant, of course, that if you were on the brass line, everyone in the entire school saw you. You had to stand there, feet firmly planted as hordes of hysterical teenagers rampaged past every time the bell went, usually giving you a sly dig in the ribs as they clattered by.

The genius of the brass line was that waiting there for your punishment was infinitely worse than the punishment itself. By the time you actually got into Mr Fethney's office to explain why you were wearing a purple mohair sweater instead of the requisite blue V-neck (it was in the wash, for goodness sake), you were such a quivering wreck that you just wanted to curl up in a dark corner and whimper until home time.

I'm sure that Mr Fethney was a nice enough chap at home, complimenting Mrs Fethney on her cooking and reading all the little Fethneys bedtime stories, but at school he was something of a dark, malign presence.

Now, I'm not saying it's a good thing for headteachers to terrify their pupils, but I do think a slight shiver of apprehension when they sweep past can work wonders.

Someone in a pinstripe suit with a Blackberry in one hand and a computer printout of crunched numbers in the other just doesn't have the same effect.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers (who obviously didn't learn anything about finger spaces at school) is urging the Government to consider replacing headteachers with chief executives.

While I can see some sense in bringing in business managers to revamp city-wide education systems, streamlining recruitment and managing the finances, I can't see the logic in removing an experienced teacher, who has spent years working with children, and replacing them with a chief executive who probably wouldn't even recognise their own children in the street.

The National Health Service has hardly flourished with the introduction of additional tiers of managers, and there is no reason to believe schools would be any different.

From what I've seen, most headteachers are adept at managing their school finances, the only problem is that the Government does not provide them with enough money to manage.

More teachers, more books, more sports equipment, more musical instruments, more kitchen staff, more cleaners. These are the things headteachers need to help them do their jobs.

More managers? The Government should get on the brass line and give this one a rethink.


I KNEW all those O-levels and A-levels would come in handy eventually.

There were times when I suspected they weren't worth the paper they were printed on. I mean, since leaving school, I can count the number of times I've needed to use logarithms on the fingers of one hand, and don't even get me started on quadratic equations - they're blummin' useless when you are trying to add up your shopping list in Asda to see if you've got enough money left for a sneaky Toffee Crisp.

But it seems all that hard work wasn't for nothing. A new study has found that women with qualifications are more likely to binge drink.

If I had known that I would have gone to university. With a degree under my belt I could have been a full-blown alcoholic by now.