Investment Opportunity: Failed comprehensive, reputedly one of the worst schools in Britain. Located in rundown area, hated by parents and children alike. Facing immediate closure.

Interested? Well, forget it. This offer has already been snapped up.

And what's more, the man behind this least tempting of privatisations is not in the slightest mad.

In fact, Stanley Goodchild CBE had the look of a man who knows exactly what he's doing as he sat in the living room of his Cumnor home looking down on a large swimming pool. The school privatisation may not rival British Gas and BT for instant profit. But as education shake-ups go, the Oxford Rotarian knows he is overseeing a real classroom revolution.

Mr Goodchild, 55, is a former maths teacher and schools chief inspector, who went on to run Berkshire's education service.

The school Mr Goodchild is to privatise is King's Manor in Guildford. Faced with closing the school, Surrey county council finally decided to put it out to tender.

The job of restoring it went to 3Es Enterprises (named after Tony Blair's pre-election priority 'education, education, education') run by Mr Goodchild and his wife Valerie, a headteacher in Birmingham. Mr Goodchild said: "It's the first time a private company has been asked to take over a school. There was a lot of concern there, with parents worried."

But he quickly promised to deliver what they most wanted: discipline, academic achievement and uniforms.

The result was a 98 per cent vote in favour of the plan, with the school to be reopened in 2000 as a voluntary aided arts and technology college.

This month sees Mr Goodchild busily seeking company involvement closer to home for his other great passion - the Oxford charity ball.

"I wanted to put something back," he said. Now he is deter- mined that the ball will raise £10,000 for the Helen House Hospice in Oxford.

Story date: Thursday 20 May

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.