The woman in charge of the West's worst performing schools finally announced her retirement despite her bosses insisting she was still in a job.

Bristol City Council initially refused to confirm Heather Tomlinson was taking early retirement from her £120,000-a-year job after four-and-a-half years, leaving the council searching for its fifth education boss in seven years.

But the Western Daily Press obtained leaked a memo sent by Ms Tomlinson to her colleagues, informing them of her departure.

When approached again, the council finally admitted she was leaving.

Although Ms Tomlinson's time in the job included some of the worst GCSE results on record and national headlines when her department instructed schools not to punish pupils for bullying, she sparked one of the biggest school building projects the city has seen and an eventual upturn in exam results.

She was also at the centre of a spelling scandal when her letter to governors reassuring them about Bristol school league table ranking in 2007 featured a misspelling and a grammatical error.

In the memo sent out on her first day back from the Christmas break, she says that subject to approval at a meeting on Thursday, she will be leaving as director of children's services.

In the letter, Ms Tomlinson said: "The role of a director of children's services is extremely demanding in any authority, as recent events in the media have demonstrated.

"The role is especially demanding in Bristol. I've loved being part of 'Team Bristol' over the past four- and-a-half years, but feel that this is the right time for someone else to take the reins to lead children's services to the next level.

"I am proud to have been able to contribute to so many exciting developments.

"It's been a privilege to work with so many talented colleagues, and to see outcomes for children and young people improving year on year.

"I know that Bristol's schools and children's services will go from strength to strength in the future." But Wansdyke MP Dan Norris said few would shed tears at her departure.

Mr Norris was a principal critic of Ms Tomlinson's leadership of Bristol's education and children's services department, particularly of the city council's no-blame approach to school bullying.

Mr Norris said: "Few will shed tears at the departure of a director who not only failed to make significant differences to the city's education performance, but is also the person who led Bristol's bullying debacle, unbelievably instructing schools not to punish bullies. This was a huge error of judgment and from this point on Ms Tomlinson's days were numbered.

When Ms Tomlinson was appointed in April 2004, it was the first time in the history of the city that a woman has been appointed to the top education job."

At the time of her appointment Peter Abraham, who was the councillor in charge of education, praised her innovative approach, drive and track record at Nottingham.

Ms Tomlinson took over after a turbulent period in which the city almost had control of its schools taken away by central government.

A year after Bristol pupils achieved the worst GCSE results in England in 2005, the Government's former chief inspector of schools Chris Woodhead called for Ms Tomlinson's resignation, saying parents could not have confidence in her.

But she continued to press on with a programme of new buildings, new ways of running schools and changes to make the curriculum more relevant.

Bristol is now on course to be the first local authority in the country to rebuild or replace all its secondary school buildings, exam results continue to go up and an Ofsted report on the council's children's and young people's services earlier this month noted some sustained and encouraging improvements.