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When John Andrews retires next May as chief executive of the Further and Higher Education Funding Councils for Wales he will leave Welsh post-16 education transformed, even without the wholesale mergers now suggested.

Seconded to the Welsh Office in January 1992 from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he was a professor and head of the law department, he helped provide the blueprint for the two Welsh funding councils and became their chief executive four months later.

He has always trumpeted the value of further and higher education working closer together and earlier this year advised on the creation of the Scottish Further Education Funding Council under a common executive with the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council, on the Welsh model.

While he describes his tenure in Wales as "a privilege as well as a challenge", he has not always had an easy ride.

He was roundly attacked by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee in June for "stupefying" responses to questions and "extraordinary complacency" over financial collapse at Gwent Tertiary College, where he admitted the funding council had "made mistakes".

But he is also praised for being "shrewd"while "not afraid to speak his mind".

Educated at Newport High School and Wadham College, Oxford, he was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1960.

By that time, he had already been working as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and lecturer in English law at Birmingham.

He returned to Wales in 1967 as professor of law at Aberystwyth and worked his way up to become deputy principal.

Since then, he has served on numerous advisory committees, including chairing the Police Promotions Exam Board.