In Consilio Consilium

Teachers at Darwen Vale High School in Lancashire are on strike today, in protest at the bad behaviour of the pupils, who are "pushing them, challenging them to fights, and threatening to film their lessons and post them online".

Is that it? I have worked in schools where doors were deliberately slammed on teachers' hands, where teachers were spat on, where younger female teachers had to be given Police escorts home, where the staff room was behind two doors with different door codes at the end of a corridor accessible only through another door with a third door code, and where the whole school had to be evacuated because pupils where holding up their cigarette lighters to the gas taps. Each of these incidents occurred at a different school, on an entirely random day on which I happened to be doing supply there.

In the last case, while we were all outside on the field, someone hotwired a teacher's moped and rode it off into the distance. The Police had to be called, but said that that was just Friday afternoon at that school. That evening, well fed and watered, I delivered a speech in black tie within the precincts of God's Own University. It began, "Today, I have seen both sides of the English class divide". At another school, I was there early in the Spring Term and was told that on the last day before the Christmas holiday someone from the Council had come in unannounced and sacked the Head Teacher on the spot.

But after a year of Michael Gove, they have finally had enough even at Darwen Vale High School in Lancashire, where the pupils push them, challenge them to fights, and threaten to film their lessons and post them online. So what on earth must the places described above be like now?

Still, never mind. There will soon be at least one school too fabulously staffed and resourced for words. The Toby Young Free School, the sole example of the scheme to which has been diverted every penny of what was previously the Building Schools for the Future Programme.