Unfortunately, there was one small exception to this unification of the troops and that was the tiny minority of parents who had their own particular axes to grind. So, the school had refused to move their child to a class with their best friend, or had been unable to provide their child with the precise subject options that they would have preferred, or the school had, without any grounds at all, complained about the conduct of their allegedly perfect offspring. Whatever the specific cause for their festering resentment, this they saw as a chance for revenge. No matter that they would not consider letting their child leave for an "inferior" school, they still felt, fortified by all the talk of parent power, determined to exact some personal retribution.

All parents are sent a benign and anonymous questionnaire by the inspectors. We were pretty proud at the unusually high response rate, demonstrating, as we naively supposed, the overwhelming support of the parents. Indeed, it showed overwhelming support - apart from the minority of complaints. To our astonishment, frustration and growing anger, we found that a disproportionate amount of the day was spent feeling like suspects answering to anonymous accusations about our bad practice.

The first signs of abnormality came early on. One of the events of the day coinciding with the inspection was a long-planned workshop for talented keyboard players to develop their skills further and to work together to learn new techniques. The inspector, who on the telephone had claimed to be a great lover of music and proud of her own musical family, breezed into the session and stayed for 30 seconds, saying she had other things to which to attend. We are particularly proud of our excellence in choral work and one of our choirs was rehearsing at lunchtime. The students were told that they would be visited and, rather than end the rehearsal in time for sandwiches, voluntarily stayed on to practise. But no visit came. The inspectors clearly had more pressing concerns than being courteous and interested enough to listen to pupils proudly displaying their excellence.