So, another party conference season has drawn to a close. Labour were in Liverpool, where the education highlight was the emergence of Angela Rayner as a top tier Shadow Cabinet performer - helped, it must be said, by the gift (from Labour’s perspective) of being able to unite against grammars.

And the Tories have just finished in Birmingham, where I’ve also been for the past few days. Last year, I had the treat of being spat at in Manchester. This week, the welcome was more friendly, other than the charming woman who bellowed, “Tory scum, get out of Brum,” as people arrived.

Or maybe that was just my fellow TES columnist Mary Bousted speaking to me…

‘Grammar schools came up one or twice (a minute)’

I never really understand people who talk of “the mood of the conference”. It’s such a large event that, inevitably, you end up carving out your own conference by your choice of events. So, for all that the journalists’ coverage was about talk of Brexit, unsurprisingly that didn’t come up much at the education fringes and receptions. Grammar schools did, though, but only once or twice (a minute).

In contrast to NiMo last year, Justine Greening was conspicuous by her absence from any fringe events. Further education minister Rob Halfon did a couple of gigs, and told us that apprenticeships are “a good thing”. Higher education minister Jo Johnson said that he was in favour of his own HE Bill. And school standards minister Nick Gibb gave paeans of praise to the English Baccalaureate and to Michaela Community School. (I pause here for a signal of your appreciation for bringing you such ground-breaking news).

Ms Greening’s conference debut as “ed sec” came on Tuesday afternoon. In years gone by, we’ve been spoiled by the appearance of various high-profile warm-up artists - in particular, Michael Gove was a veritable master at constructing his own Conservative version of Avengers Assemble.

Last year, NiMo deployed Lawrence Dallaglio and Vicky Pendleton. But this year, it was one quick intro from a Fujitsu apprentice and then we were into the main act.

In substance terms, it was fairly light (just as Brexit means Brexit, apparently No10’s rule about no big announcements from the stage means exactly that, too).

But in positioning terms, it was interesting how much time and passion Ms Greening put into a discussion of skills and technical education - something she promised would be a big political priority of hers.

Frankly, it’s been far too long since any education secretary said that, and all power to her red box in making that a reality.

And so the travelling circus departs for another year. Most people around me seem happy. But you can’t please everyone.

At the beginning of a fringe that I was hosting on schools and social mobility, a man came up to me and asked if Michelle Donelan MP, a member of the education select committee, was speaking.

I apologised but said we actually were privileged to have Nick Gibb, the schools minister. The man paused, then smartly turned on his heel. “I’ll be off then,” he said. “Michelle’s the one for me.”

Jonathan Simons is a former head of education in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit under Gordon Brown and David Cameron @PXEducation