Apparently, leadership quality is in sharp decline among our country’s headteachers. Our own headteacher, Richard Dick, has been incensed by recent press coverage surrounding the issue, and has consequently written to the newspaper responsible for hyping up the story, inviting their education correspondent to “pay a visit to Greenfield Academy and witness the fact that leadership of our schoolchildren is as purposeful and visionary as it has ever been, at each and every single level of school management. Come along and smell the coffee!” If ever there was a hostage to fortune, then this was it. Aside from the fact that Mr Dick had to convene a special meeting of the ethos committee to put the letter together (an organisational issue that speaks volumes about the leadership within Greenfield Academy), it would be a foolish reporter who strayed anywhere near our school to smell anything. Especially if they ended up outside the third year’s cloakroom when Simon Sheridan is in attendance.

Tuesday

I have been shocked to discover that plagiarism is rife among my fifth year class. The prevalence of this criminal activity first came to my attention when I was delivering some guidance to Brian Finlayson on the contents of his review of personal reading.

The boy was never the sharpest knife in the box, I’m afraid, but he’d certainly seemed to put more effort into his work than usual, even if I disagreed with his claim that A Disaffection portrayed the life of a typical teacher.

“However,” I tried to persuade him, “I really think it would be advisable to give an indication in a review of personal reading that you’ve read more than one book by James Kelman.”

“But ah havny,” he shrugged. “An’ anyway, ma big sister said she nuvur read two books fur RPR - an’ she goat toap wack in the exams.”

“Be that as it may, Brian,” I conceded the point, “it would just ensure that I Hang on a bit!” I stopped as my eye reached the end of his first draft and noticed the footer claiming copyright to WebAcademic Associates. “What’s this?”

He had the grace to look slightly awkward and then came up with an unlikely story about printing it on some paper he’d used for an Internet search. I was at swift pains to assure him that I hadn’t come up the Clyde in a barrel, so to speak, and would take the matter further.

The little delinquent had clearly enlisted the assistance of a professional essay-writer from the web, and it suddenly became clear why his RPR had demonstrated a maturity of thought and expression that I would never have attributed to him in a month of Sundays. “Kelman’s language might appear untoward, even obscene to certain eyes,” the piece had said at the end of page 1, “but his frank colloquialisms demonstrate a rigorously realistic interpretation of life’s ultimate certainties, however dispiriting these certainties might prove to be.”

Even if he had written it himself, I’d still have declared it hogwash!

Wednesday

“Take all the stress out of moving. Buy a new house for complete peace of mind.” That is what the advertisement in today’s newspaper property supplement said and I almost felt moved to follow in Mr Dick’s epistolary footsteps by penning a few choice words of my own to the editor.

Needless to say, problems still abound in our new house. The creaking floorboards I can put up with; doors that stick, or won’t close, are a minor inconvenience; hot taps that run cold water andcold ones that run hot make life a little awkward, I must confess. But the biggest disappointment of all has been the state of our garden, which still - five five weeks after moving in - resembles a building site in the middle of a monsoon area. Old tins, wooden joists and metal bars abound across the Somme-like glaur of mud and water which constitutes our “blissful haven of relaxation”, as the sales brochure put it.

The site foreman has assured me on three occasions that turf will be laid very shortly now, but I have given up holding my breath. And when I asked for assurance this afternoon that the land would be properly drained beforehand, he gave me a sceptical look and explained: “Builders don’t drain garden areas, Mr Simpson. The water table should settle after a few months and the garden will drain naturally.”

I returned his sceptical look, puffed my cheeks and closed the door. I’m beginning to wish that we were back in our old house.

Thursday

An evening supper to celebrate our national bard’s birthday was a major disappointment. Alas, most of the upper school wouldn’t know how to conduct themselves at a brewery party, never mind an auspicious occasion such as this.

Some of their boisterousness was explained after I did a spot-check on their glasses of “Irn-bru”, which seemed remarkably full throughout the evening. Their quasi-miraculous self-filling properties were explained by the discovery of several dozen bottles beneath the tables, each once containing a virulent alcoholic - and equally amber - drink going by the improbable name of Wee Beastie.

And wee beasties proved an admirable nomenclature for these citizens of tomorrow, as they ignored most of the speeches. Even Mr Dick’s.

Mind you, he would have found it difficult to command the attention of your average Women’s Institute branch, given the faltering and hesitant nature of a speech that revealed an abysmal lack of knowledge and an even worse delivery style. If I record that his best joke concerned the man who had to be taken to hospital because he couldn’t stop reciting To A Mouse and Tam o’Shanter (they admitted him to the Burns unit), then you’ll probably get the picture. The pupils responded with contemptuous babble throughout.

The only moments of silence were accorded to Brian Finlayson, whose Address to the Lassies was greeted with rapt attention and, subsequently, uproarious and appreciative laughter (by everyone except members of staff, that is). This was because he commenced his speech with an extremely vulgar joke about two dwarves in a brothel (a joke no doubt discovered during one of his Internet trawls), and then proceeded to deliver a litany of gratuitously offensive and sexist jokes which would have done credit to Bernard Manning at his most abhorrent.

Karen Porter’s valiant attempt at a reply on behalf of the fairer sex was interrupted by constant imprecations from the fifth year boys that she “get her kit off”, until Mr Dick had had enough. He stood up in the middle of her speech and simply announced that the haggis would now be piped in.

Whereupon I took my cue to start the language department’s puny five-watt cassette recorder and puny Steven Austin made the worst address to the beast I’ve ever heard. His only moment of enthusiasm coincided with the drawing and plunging of a fearsome meat cleaver into the haggis’s entrails, after which dramatic interlude he returned to his faltering rendition.

Why on earth Mr Dick asked a dyslexic child to recite “Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face” I shall never know. Perhaps it was something to do with our inclusion policy. As far as I could see, it just left Steven embarrassed.

Friday

I brought up the matter of Brian Finlayson’s plagiarism at this morning’s departmental meeting, as well as the nine other cases I suspected of cheating, having had a good look through the entire cohort’s RPR offerings.

To my utter disbelief, Simon Young declared that he thought I was over-reacting to the situation.

“I can appreciate why we can’t let Finlayson’s offering be submitted without alteration,” he conceded. “I mean, we’ll need to get rid of that copyright declaration at the bottom and get him to alter some of the phraseology to be a little more in line with his own, but most of the others you suspect look as if they could’ve been done by the kids who are claiming them. And who are we to say they haven’t done them if they assure us otherwise?” I was speechless, so he continued.

“And have you had a look at the Web Academic site yourself, Morris?” he enquired. “It’s got a staffroom section as well as a pupil section. They’ve got some terrific lesson plans I’ve been pulling off since you told me about Finlayson. I’ve got most of next month’s lessons drawn up already.”

I shook my head and shut my eyes. What’s sauce for the goose would appear to be sauce for the gander.

Meanwhile, Mr Dick has been taken up on his newspaper challenge. We are to be visited by an education correspondent from the national press who will feature the school in a series of articles on “Scottish education today”.

Now that Mr Dick’s bluff has been called, one might imagine him to be a little apprehensive, but he announced the imminent visitation with all the confidence of Neville Chamberlain on his return from Munich.

Alas, I expect the eventual consequences to be just as disastrous.

Next month: National fame beckons for Greenfield. Or will it be infamy?