Inspection tip-offs!

Whatever. A half-day? A week? They should be so lucky. I remember the old Ofsted Search and Destroy Missions. We were legally tipped off two months in advance. It gave us a nice, large window in which to go quite barking. The whole academic year was ruined in a fever of apprehension, a nightmare of occupation and a fallout of nervous breakdowns. I got drunk and strung out on Rescue Remedy.

Preparation involved yards of pointless paperwork, midnight hours cooking the books, finessing the figures, confecting lesson plans and action plans ‘til world war 3 and bribing the caretakers with the Jameson to get rid of the gum and graffiti on the walls. We had get in by dawn, check a trillion books with positives, plaster the walls with laminations and the whiteboards with Aims and Intentions and send the psychos to Inclusion, a broom cupboard or on offshore leave.