I TRAINED as a teacher, not a social worker or a child psychologist. I taught five different classes per week averaging 20 different lessons to prepare, 150 homeworks and 150 books to mark.

I also prepared and marked end of term exams, children’s projects for their CSE exams, kept records of their progress and wrote reports to parents.

Most of this was done outside of school hours.

I ensured there was no bullying in my classes, but this became progressively more difficult as sanctions were removed and parents and children became more and more argumentative.

Once I was able to sit the children in rows and could see exactly what each was doing.

Then I was forced to teach in groups and could never know what was being whispered across the tables.

I stopped one bully from kicking a smaller boy he had knocked to the ground. He then accused me of hitting him and I spent the next three months under the threat of being sacked as his mother contacted the head, governors and councillors about my “outrageous” attack on her son, who was bigger than me.

We finally found a witness, who was not frightened of her son, who said that I had never taken my hands out of my pockets.

Tom Cooper, Durham City.