Sir Michael Wilshaw was quite right to focus on the impending skills crisis in the UK in a “farewell” interview at the weekend.

The chief schools inspector, who is standing down at the end of the year, argues that - as a result of Brexit - what the UK education system needs, and needs swiftly, is a quickfire boost to vocational education.

If the UK is to abandon the European Union, it will need a skilled workforce to be at its beck and call if it is to take advantage of other markets it will be pursuing.

The subtext is that it is all very well to bang on about controlling immigration, but what good will that be to the country if there is no one left with the skills necessary to turn us into a top-class trading nation?

He focused on the problem in one of a series of farewells - we still have his final annual report as head of Ofsted to look forward to.

In other words, the manner of his leaving is being conducted very much in line with the manner he has adopted throughout his period of office: shooting from the hip.

I imagine his final few weeks will not be of much comfort to prime minister Theresa May, as she continues to pursue her grammar school agenda. Good. She should bear in mind that - at the time of his appointment - he held great credibility with senior figures in her party (and still does).

It was wrongly assumed at the time that he and then education secretary Michael Gove were two sides of the same coin. By speaking out without fear or favour on a range of issues, including the standards of multi-academy trusts, he erased that particular assumption.

When he has gone, we shall miss him, although he has promised to continue to speak out against the grammar school proposals. Pressure on the government over its grammar school proposals needs to be kept up - especially by those who have a political agenda to pursue - to provide enough food for thought for potential rebel Conservative MPs when the issue comes before Parliament.

I hate to sound too much like foreign secretary Boris Johnson as he rails against president Putin’s Russia, but we really ought to be demonstrating outside the Department for Education (or Downing Street) to draw attention to the potential damage the proposals will incur.

Whether it be stressing that 11 is too young an age to write off a child as a failure, or the destruction of outstanding comprehensive schools, as they can no longer take in the brightest talents in the neighbourhood, or the disadvantage such a system holds for poorer pupils whose parents cannot afford private tuition (I am afraid I do not put too much faith in the idea of uncoachable tests), the points need to be made.

Spare a thought, too, for the demise of the history of art A level. It’s not the exam boards’ fault that it has gone - the AQA was the last exam board to pull the plug on it - but schools, under pressure to get as many pupils to achieve top grades in the core subjects, were just not putting their pupils in for it. 

The subject did, however, provide a spark for those young people anxious to learn about our cultural history and, for that reason, we should mourn its passing. I know it is being pointed out that no university demands it as a specific entry requirement, but surely someone who has studied it at A level is likely to fare better when taking a degree in the subject.

Its demise was followed by a threat that the archaeology A level would be the next subject to become extinct. The era of the Gradgrind curriculum up until the age of 18 fast marches upon us.

Richard Garner was education editor of The Independent for 12 years and has been writing about education for more than three decades

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