It is amazing the audacity of parents sometimes. I’ve already complained about the whole parents evening trauma – and believe me, it is a trauma. But this morning I had a classic. I’d just finished a teeth-pulling lesson on Chaucer with year eleven; serious agony for everyone involved, when Hilary from the office came tearing down the corridor. (I say tearing, it was more of an over-excited waddle.)

Apparently, Mrs Phillips (mother of the dreadful Kevin) was in reception, claiming that I was an hour late for a promised meeting with her. Hilary had tried, and failed, several times to explain to her that there was no way I’d have organised a meeting with her at 10:15am, because I was teaching then. But Mrs P would not be moved; she had proof she said. I had told Kevin I was seeing her then. Kevin, who wouldn’t even hear a fire alarm if it went off in his ear could not possibly have actually heard me say this; mainly because I didn’t say it, and even if I did say it, he wouldn’t have listened anyway.

So there she was, lying to me, and using her cretinous son as evidence. I stood firm, this was a matter of principle; and I told her in no uncertain terms that she was mistaken. I could see her start to doubt herself. I was winning. And, at the exact moment that her bottom lip started to wobble, the head walked past us and stopped: “Seems to have been a mix up, eh? Well, as Mrs Phillips is here now, you can see her anyway, can’t you Mr Baker?”

Words fail me.

The news recently about failing primary schools is putting everyone on edge; only this morning the assistant head Janet subjected me to a ten minute lecture – in front of the rest of the staff – for finishing the last of the coffee in the staffroom.

And now little Bobby’s parents Mr and Mrs Perpetually Irritating want to have a meeting with the head, which apparently I have to attend, about how this will affect their precious boy’s development and what we, as a school, intend to do about it. I expect what we shall do about will be what we always do which is to work our proverbials off, spend most of the holidays coming up with new action plans for Ed Balls, and then fail to meet his mercurial targets because they either don’t actually apply to us, don’t make sense or are impossible to achieve.

Good Lord. I’ve been put in charge of the Christmas nativity this year, which is a terrifying and alarming prospect. With over seven different religions and 15 ethnic groups at the school, the traditional Bible story is usually adapted to ensure we’re inclusive. I’m still not exactly sure how to adapt one sacred religious story, to turn it into a mishmash of seven different religious stories, five of which don’t recognise Christmas at all.

And then I’ve got to pick a girl to play the Virgin Mary, a process that I am sure will produce scarier scenes that those on America’s Next Top Model. I mean seven year old actually really know how to pull each other’s hair.

This is brilliant. What a legend; nice to see some of the trade education press come out in support of misleading reports on Ofsted we’ve endured recently. Too often headlines take precedent over the facts, and this is a prime example. Pete Henshaw, editor of Sec Ed, says it better than me: “When you have an annual report that is actually very positive presented with a massive focus on the negative, and thus resulting in a spate of unhelpful and misleading headlines, I cannot help despair at how the system currently operates.”

Sorry if this post is verging on the serious, but something has to bloody well be done. Ofsted have too free a rein to write reports, and make judgements, while seemingly even controlling the way the press report on their findings. Alot of that report was positive, but no one has had anything good to say about teachers for weeks now. It’s nice that someone is fighting our corner. ”To slam teachers in this blanket way and do it directly in front of the nation’s press is demoralising and not conducive to inspiring teachers to improve,” says Henshaw. You go dude.

Frankenstein. The bane of my year twelve’s lives at the moment. They’ve been forced to study Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – forced by me. Mainly because it’s on the syllabus, and I’m very good at following orders, but also because it’s actually quite a good study in gothic literature and that is our theme du jour.

The lesson of the moment was actually going rather well, they were in groups, working on different elements of the gothic and putting together presentations (using a great resource I got from here). I was rather proud, the classroom was alive with the hum of happy students, enjoying the time to pretend to work and actually talk about Casey’s jailbait boyfriend, or whether they were going to vote for Stacey or Jo at the weekend.

Then, disaster; one of the ass(istant) heads walks in. “Random observation, keep going, ignore me.” The class fell silent. They kids began to whisper and sigh and glare at me. I tried some resounding humour and encouraging, motivational grunts, which didn’t work. Then the observatron stood up: “Dan, a word please. What’s the SEAL agenda for this lesson?” Eeerrrm, I struggle around like a flopping fish inside my empty brain trying to find a way to link social, emotional and behavioural issues with the key themes of the eighteenth century Gothic novel. I fail.

“The, err, responsibility of, err, people to, ummm, not create monsters in society?”

“Fine,” she says. Turns on her heel and leaves the classroom.  WTF? I don’t even know what ‘not creating monsters in society’ that means. Does she? Proof again that SEAL is a in actuality a fat sea mammal and NOT a legitimate way to teach the kids to behave better.

Like many of the pupils here, one of our new boys who started this term, speaks virtually no English. It’s fairly normal here, but always presents an extra challenge in the never-ending quest for perfection. When I say virtually, I’m not exaggerating; the best Samir’s managed so far is a very earnest: “Yes.” Despite numerous hours of work with him, his English has not improved at all, and of course he’s not making any friends – apart from a disastrous attempt to ‘bond’ with one of the other boys in the class when Samir sat on the boy’s desk and started frantically raising his eyebrows and blinking. As you can imagine, it only served to further alienate him. Kids can indeed be cruel.

However his parents came in for parents evening last night, and I thought that finally I’d be able to make sense of everything, and discuss him getting some extra help. It started well, Mr Samir smiled, shook my hand and said: “Hello, we are pleased to meet Samir’s teacher, thank you.” I smiled and started chatting about Samir. He nodded, as did his wife, and they both agreed with what I was saying. In fact after ten minutes of me speaking, and them offering periodic ‘yes’ responses I began to experience some rather unnerving déjà vu. I changed tack, asking them what they thought Samir needed more help with. My heart sank when Mr Samir smiled and said: “Yes.” His wife nodded frantically and added: “Yes.” Suddenly it became clear why Samir wasn’t learning any English. If he’s not speaking it at home how on earth is he ever going to learn it here?