The chief architect of the Government’s academies programme has been ousted from his post as chairman of the country’s leading schools organisation.

Sir Cyril Taylor, one of the most influential education advisers for more than 20 years, has advised four prime ministers and nine education secretaries on education policies. He was stripped of the chairmanship of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust in a boardroom coup this week.

Although he has been allowed to remain on the board, he will no longer be its chief spokesman. He is replaced by the trust’s deputy chairman, Sir James Hill, a former businessman who is chairman of an academy school in Bradford.

Sir Cyril, 72, admitted yesterday that he would have preferred to remain as chairman, but said that the rest of the board had decided that he should go as part of an overhaul of the management structure of the trust, which counts the vast majority of secondary schools in England as members.

“I have been chair for 20 years. People said, and I found it quite reasonable, that they would prefer to appoint a new chair,” he said. But he added: “I would not have said ‘no’ to staying on as chair.”

As part of the trust’s reorganisation, its 40 trustees have been replaced by a 12-person board.

Sir Cyril’s removal as chairman of the trust is the latest twist in a long and sometimes colourful career in education. He is the founder of a successful international schools exchange company and helped to create the first city technology colleges in the 1980s under the Thatcher Government. Under new Labour these were transformed to city academies. Sir Cyril also created the concept of the specialist school and pioneered the Government’s main programme for gifted and talented pupils.

He is respected as a man dedicated to raising educational standards, and as someone who can get things done and has the ear of whichever prime minister is in power.

There has been controversy too, and the low point came last year when the trust triggered the cash-for-honours controversy. Des Smith, an adviser to the trust, told an undercover reporter that donating large sums of money to schools could help to secure an honour.

Mr Smith was arrested, but later eliminated from police inquiries. The trust’s president at the time was Lord Levy, Tony Blair’s key fundraiser.

But it was Sir Cyril’s management style that is said to have alienated his fellow board members. His missionary zeal and undoubted dedication to raising school standards were suited in the trust’s early days, when it was a pioneering organisation with an annual budget of only £3 million. But his style did not sit well in an organisation that is now spending £60 million a year and which encompasses more than 3,000 schools.

The final straw came at the trust’s annual conference last month when Sir Cyril made a long speech on school failure to 1,500 of its members, most of whom were successful head teachers. It nearly prompted a mass walkout.

He also failed to win over Ed Balls, the only one of the past ten education secretaries not to count him as a personal adviser.

In November Sir Cyril said that despite “fantastic” progress in schools there were still about 17,000 “poor” teachers in England and Wales who were damaging the prospects of 400,000 pupils.

Yesterday the minister closest to him, Lord Adonis, the Schools Minister, said: “Sir Cyril Taylor’s energy and enthusiasm for, and commitment to, improving schools has been highly impressive and leaves a lasting legacy to education in this country.”

Last night an indefatigable Sir Cyril said that he still had lots more exciting projects to work on.

After becoming chairman, Sir James Hill said: “Sir Cyril Taylor has made an outstanding contribution to the education sector. He has been a driving force behind city technology colleges, specialist schools, trust schools and academies.”

— Gordon Brown left 10 Downing Street for his Christmas break yesterday – with incredulous staff being told not to expect him back before the new year.

The Prime Minister’s quip recently that he would be taking at least one day off over Christmas and new year was not seen as a joke by officials in No 10 who have become used to his prodigious workrate. But for now Mr Brown appears to be taking the idea of a rest with some seriousness.

However, most people’s idea of a Christmas holiday is not the same as Mr Brown’s. He remains very much in charge of the Government and the country.

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