Sarah presided over the brief and difficult term of office of Rosalind Turner as Director of Education and in her two years in office has certainly had to handle many challenging situations, especially consderable changes in senior personnel and the scaling down of  the department which hovers on the brink of seeing 50% of its secondary schools convert to academies. Currently 49 out of 101 secondary schools have already gone, and more on the way (The Department of Education, with decidedly dodgy arithmetical standards, already lists Kent as one of the Local Authorities with over 50% of its secondary schools as academies, on its website!).  With further senior officer retirements in train, this leaves very little continuity in the department at either political or senior officer level, at a time when its responsibilities and finances are shrinking dramatically with the loss of schools, and may itself increase the emigration of schools to become academies under government control.