THERE will be a lot of dry eyes in school staff rooms over the news that Michael Gove has been eased out of the position of Education Secretary.
As our education correspondent, Zena Hawley, points out in her analysis of his performance and his legacy, he is certainly not the only encumbent of that job to be in sustained conflict with teachers.
Nor will the policies he introduced over four years be undone at a stroke.
So we are either stuck with them or poised to derive full benefit from them, depending on your point of view.
What we can only hope is that now education becomes less of a battlefield.
Despite the bruised egos of politicians and union leaders and the frustrated aspirations of rank-and-file teachers, the greatest casualties in such a scenario are always the pupils.
Mr Gove made few friends in Derbyshire – not least because, in his criticism of the performance of our schools, he was very selective in which set of statistics he would use to try to illustrate his point and his often-fierce criticism.
A calmer, less combative approach to the education of our children ought to be the order of the day now.
