“The future starts here” and “challenging minds” proclaim the purple banners fluttering from the lamp posts on the approach to the National College for School Leadership.

And if the college’s new pound;28 million conference and administrative centre is anything to go by, then heads and deputies have indeed finally caught up with the 21st century. No more training sessions in old classrooms with tea in plastic cups: instead, conference facilities that would put many blue chip companies to shame.

The headteachers’ Sandhurst may have been up and running for more than a year, but it has only just thrown open the doors to its cedarwood and glass fronted building on the edge of Nottingham University’s Jubilee campus. Or rather, the drawbridge. The college is approached across a shallow moat, with a shimmering weir cutting off escape at the rear.

However, those heads already enjoying the high-tech seminar rooms, light and airy atriums, and well-appointed bedrooms (including fluffy white dressing gowns) show little inclination for breaking out.

“These are great facilities. It is about time we had something like this,” said Steve Gater, head of Ferryhill secondary school, Durham.

“It states that school leadership is important. We know that, but it has been undervalued for far too long.”

Hilary Craik, head of Stevenson junior school in Nottingham, agreed. Over a lunch of smoked chicken and mango salad with chorizo oil and layered moussaka with a cheese and yoghurt crust in the lakeside restaurant, she said: “It is good to have somewhere where we can get together with other people in the same boat and meet up with people from different schools.”

Director Heather Du Quesnay (later spied proprietorially removing bits of fluff from seats in the auditorium), said: “Buildings are not the be-all-and-end-all. But it is remarkable how people here do have the sense of this being about the status and worth of the teaching profession.

“The whole thing about transparency, vision, being able to be seen, is very important,” she said, referring to the open-plan style of the building. Her own office is glass-walled on three sides.

The college is expecting 20,000 school leaders to pass through its doors this year, and a ministerial appearance at the official opening next month.

At the end of a long day discussing distributed leadership and how to create the thinking school, heads and deputies will be able to retire to the bar for a well-earned drink. And maybe watch a cormorant landing on the weir.