UNTIL a few years ago, Huntington School head John Tomsett was just as sceptical about Twitter as many of his fortysomething generation.

“I thought it was pretty useless,” he admits. “I thought, ‘what can you say in 140 characters?’”

Then, in 2010, he went to watch the British Open golf at St Andrews. “A friend signed me up to Twitter while we were walking around the golf course,” he said.

It quickly became a revelation. John used Twitter while he was on holiday in France to follow what was happening during the London riots. “That was interesting.” And then he tweeted Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell, and persuaded him to come to give a talk to children at the school.

“I found him on Twitter,” he said. “He said he’d been to see some school in London, and I said come and see us, and he did.”

A year ago, he started to write a regular blog – borrowing the title This Much I know… from the Observer newspaper.

“I have been a headteacher for nine years, and at the age of 47, this much in know,” he wrote.

His blog included a series of pithy statements about the distilled knowledge and experience of his lifetime in teaching, including the following:

• “I hardly remember a single lesson from my own school days. In third year French I fell off my seat backwards and Mr P made me lie on the floor for the rest of the lesson. Anyone who says teaching is getting worse has a short memory – the profession in the 70s was shocking!”

• “The Coalition’s educational emphasis is encapsulated in the fact that they equate the BTEC First Diploma in Construction, where students learn the basics of brick-laying, painting and decorating, plumbing, electrical wiring and plastering, with Grade 6 in the Flute.”

It was heady stuff. Even better, he discovered that by using Twitter to tweet links to his blog, he was able to get people to read it. He’s continued blogging ever since – and has watched his readership skyrocket.

“I got 1,800 hits on the first day, and I’ve now had 122,000 hits,” he said. “That’s 10,000 hits a month!”

He also met other like-minded headteachers on Twitter – heads who were as concerned as he was at the direction education policy was staking under the coalition.

With the help of Alastair Campbell and his partner Fiona Millar, they were invited to a round-table meeting at the Guardian last October. Millar wrote a piece about it in The Guardian, and that same evening the group launched themselves on twitter with the tag @Heads’Roundtable. It took off like a rocket.

“By 11pm we had 4,000 followers, and by 11.30pm, Stephen Twigg’s special adviser had contacted us asking to meet.” Stephen Twigg being Labour’s shadow education secretary.

The Headteachers’ Roundtable – through its @HeadsRoundtable Twitter address – now has almost 10,000 followers and is beginning to have a real impact on educational policy and debate.

“In April, Michael Gove name-checked us,” said Mr Tomsett. “He said he thought he was winning over the hearts and minds of headteachers, but then he added ‘I don’t think I’ve won over the hearts and minds of John Tomsett’.”

It was an extraordinary demonstration of the power of social media to influence people, Mr Tomsett says.

Ten thousand followers on Twitter may not sound a huge number, and you shouldn’t fall into the trap of overestimating your influence.

“But policy-makers are absolutely Twitter-savvy,” he said. By which he means you really can reach, on Twitter, the people that are in a position to change things.

He’s always been passionate about teaching, he said. “But 20 years ago we didn’t have the social media. There is such a good platform now.”