Around me, they are dismantling the stands, and hurrying the merchandise back to the pantechnicons. I’m watching an educational software provider one of the many one-man bands at BETT ‘95 disconsolately scooping unsold packages into a black bin liner. After four days of hard smiling, he allows himself the luxury of looking tired. He even risks malevolent glowers at the stragglers who don’t have the savvy to spot that his software is all that schools need to motivate even the most reluctant pupil, banish illiteracy, halt urban crime, and they still utter the words like a mantra at BETT ‘95 “deliver the national curriculum”.

Of course, all the exhibitors have crossed their hearts and promised the crocodile of teachers who come within smiling distance that they have the product that no classroom should be without. Teachers, fortunately, are a wily lot. They can sort out the possible shysters from the Sherstons, 4Mations, RMs, Acorns and those other remarkable companies who, for over a decade of turmoil, have shown their unstinting commitment to education.

Olympia’s underfloor heating and the overpriced sandwiches are enough to weaken all but the most resolute. But, I’m happy to report, teachers seem magnificently immune to the hard-sell: they are not fooled by the off-the-peg smile and the winning suit. More than once over the last four long days, I’ve seen smart alecs in mid-spiel shot down by teachers who have spent careers honing their skills at spotting bunkum, blarney and bull.

It’s crazy, really, that Bett is organised the way that it is. The manufacturers arrive at the show with “solutions” a favourite word and then have to persuade teachers that they have the requisite problems. It’s like the Ideal Homes Exhibition and similar events where you go because your cooker doesn’t cook and are beguiled by wonderfully plausible hawkers who try to convince you that what you really need to make your life complete is a gizmo for extracting juice from a kiwi fruit or cutting the definitive crinkly chip.

Obviously, it isn’t the manufacturers that should be telling teachers what schools need, but the teachers spelling out clearly to the manufacturers what they want and how much they are prepared to pay. So, I’d like to see Olympia host a show in which the teachers occupy the exhibition space. They could use those wonky trestle tables normally reserved for school fayres and jumble sales. The manufacturers could then trundle around learning about education. Of course, they’d see some wonderful things. But also on display would be huddles of recalcitrant adolescents, angry illiterates and classes of 30 eager-beaver 10-year-olds incensed at the absurdity of having to share a single computer. There would be displays of leaking roofs and overcrowded classrooms. There would be working demonstrations of how LMS budgets shrink, and how the national curriculum can weary even the most enthusiastic teacher.

Caged and labelled, there would be a menagerie of mendicant headteachers, cliques of shady governors and choirs of whingeing Luddites. There should also be a massed band drawn from that growing army of teachers who are on temporary contracts, some of whom I met at BETT ‘95. They are forced to spend so much time worrying about whether they’ll even be in a classroom in the future that they are unable to give much serious thought to the crucial question of what might be going on there.

BETT ‘96 will be at Olympia on January 10-13, next year.