Critical friends of New Labour in schools and higher education gained recognition in the New Year honours list, as the government continued to flag up its education credentials.
Headteachers' leader David Hart, who has often criticised ministers but backed their plans to give schools more autonomy, is knighted, along with Professor Ivor Crewe who helped deliver universities' support for top-up fees.
Anna Hassan, a dynamic primary headteacher in Hackney who pioneered after-school activities, becomes a dame, and there are CBEs for four heads and OBEs for 11.
David Hart, who recently concluded 27 years as general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, during which he saw 13 education secretaries come and go and became one of the most influential figures on the educational scene, will spend his retirement as Sir David.
A lawyer by training, not a teacher, he was frequently critical of government policies, and attacked Labour ministers' decision not to implement the Tomlinson report on 14 to 19 education - but was not relentlessly negative. He supported performance-related pay, for instance, as a way of raising salaries.
At his farewell conference he played to headteachers' gut distrust of parent power by calling the government's proposals for more parental influence in schools "putting an alcoholic in charge of the bar", but he also challenged his members to sort out their "civil war" over the government's workload plans, which he strongly supported.
Ivor Crewe, vice-chancellor of Essex University, who was national spokesman for the university sector when the government squeezed through its controversial bill on top-up fees, is rewarded with a knighthood.
As president of Universities UK he helped to rally vice-chancellors behind the bill despite strong differences of opinion among his colleagues. Some in the most prestigious institutions felt that the maximum fee of £3,000 was not nearly enough, while several heads of new universities were opposed to variable fees in principle.
Professor Crewe managed to persuade them to rally behind the bill as the only realistic hope of improving university funding - and some wavering Labour MPs appear to have been convinced to support the measure by lobbying from university heads. As the bill squeaked through its second reading by five votes, ministers were doubtless grateful.
As an acknowledged expert on elections, Sir Ivor showed a grasp of the political process in promoting the interests of universities over the past two years.
The government continues to flag up its education credentials with honours for headteachers. Anna Hassan, headteacher of Millfields community school, in the London borough of Hackney, is made a dame. Last summer her school, which has been running extracurricular school activities for nine years, was used by Ruth Kelly, the education secretary, as the launchpad for a £680m programme to ensure all schools offer 8am-to-6pm activities by 2010. On display for the media as good examples at the Hackney primary were activities ranging from an early-morning breakfast club to post-school keep-fit, music and drama classes.
The distinguished Byzantine scholar Averil Cameron, warden of Keble College, Oxford, becomes a dame for services to classical scholarship.
Professor of late antique and Byzantine history at Oxford, Dame Averil chairs the Prosopography of the Byzantine World research project, which aims to record in a computerised database all surviving information about every individual mentioned in Byzantine sources during the period from 641 to 1261.
One of the few women to head a former men's college at Oxford, she is also editor of volumes 12 to 14 of the Cambridge Ancient History.
Two leading scientists also receive knighthoods. Professor John Ball, Sedleian professor of natural philosophy at Oxford's Mathematical Institute, has won several awards and prizes in the UK and abroad, and is currently president of the International Mathematical Union.
Professor Michael Pepper heads the semiconductor physics group at the Cavendish laboratory, Cambridge, and his research interests include the use of physics in medicine and biology.
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