February 13, 2001 9:37: HAVE you ever thought of doing something so foolhardy that even the idea of it will later bring you out in a cold sweat?

You know the sort of thing climbing Mount Everest in a T-shirt and shorts, sailing round the world solo in a leaky bucket, placing a bet on when the Western Sector project in High Wycombe will actually be built...

Or how about becoming a teacher? In a moment of recklessness some years ago, I seriously thought about taking up the chalk and sent off for teacher training courses.

Fortunately the fever passed, but it took strong words from an experienced and brilliant teacher to warn me that the early 1990s was no time to think about becoming a Mr Chips.

This teacher was one of the breed (may they rest in peace) who thought teaching was about inspiring pupils and helping them to enjoy learning. The exams were almost an afterthought.

But this teacher could see the way things were going. When I went to see her at my old school one day, a new breed was taking up residence. English teachers who had never read a book for fun (unless fun was to become part of the syllabus of course). It was a chilling sight.

A new era of paperwork and exam passes was beginning. Now the pupil who scored 60 0-levels and ten A-levels would become the pride of the school, not the pupil who might actually write a book themselves.

Now the hand that gives the exam grade rules the world. Come exam time and schools trot out the stats about 100 per cent pass rates, 88 per cent A-C passes. Yawn, yawn, yawn. Posh school gets top marks. What a bloody surprise. What about the pupil you thought would never get anywhere and managed to pass one CSE? Aren't they worth bragging about? It seems not.

So it would take more than the £2,000 bribe the Government is offering to get me into teaching.

I feel sorry for the good ones that are left, buried under paperwork. A friend of mine loves the classroom but spends so much time doing paperwork she feels more like an office clerk than a teacher. There are plans and systems for everything and signed in triplicate and blah blah blah. Just two years into the job and already she is thinking of leaving.

I suppose it is no news that in teaching as in many other professions it is the shopfloor workers left to carry the can for the incompetent management that lands them in the manure. When people are paid too little, work too long and feel their every movement is criticised is it any wonder that morale is low and mistakes are made?

Who wouldn't want to get out of the classroom. These days there is so much paperwork to do it is the teachers not the pupils who are kept in detention.

Paul Ryan