I’m writing this on the morning of the first GCSE English paper at my place of work. After attempting to brace myself against a tsunami of bodies, nervous chatter, unconvincing posturing and a fair few cases of the exam-day crazies, I fail miserably. Within minutes, I end up being stampeded by the gargantuan wave of anxiety-filled students while attempting to tick countless names off a sign-in sheet that’s sent to admin so they can ring round and beg, cajole or threaten any stragglers in an attempt to get their sorry carcasses into one of the 60 or so classrooms that have been allocated for exams.

I pick myself up, brush myself off and start a hardcore cardio regime that involves grabbing the arm of any latecomers and pelting them down corridors, up stairs, hurling them into their designated exam rooms and stuffing their pockets with the black ballpoint pens they’ve inevitably failed to bring, all the while wishing them good luck.

I simply carry the ones who can’t keep up with me. I’ve got no time for dawdlers.

And that’s just me. It’s all hands to the pumps as countless staff direct, invigilate, support, scribe, coordinate and administrate the hell out of shizzle in an attempt to get the students where they need to be, with what they need to have the best shot at succeeding.

Like at countless colleges up and down the country, GCSE exam day here is about as epic an undertaking as you can get. The maths and English GCSE retake policy has meant that FE has had to deal with what is pretty much a nightmare of staffing, rooming and the movement and organisation of a huge number of people on several different days. And this is (of course) without any extra funding to do so.

Whatever your opinion on the retake policy (personally, I’m slowly warming to it), it’s become blatantly obvious that there was either no thought as to the logistical ramifications of its introduction or no one who introduced the policy cared as to how it would be carried out (sadly, the cynic in me believes these two scenarios are equally plausible).

And yet we deal with it. We run to and from rooms. We call hundreds of students. We adapt and make sure that everyone has a place, no matter what. This is FE, where staff and students make things work that are huge in scope yet lacking in thought.

But as I sit here and massage my aching calves, pouring water down my parched throat and sweating buckets, looking at my colleagues as they wander around the reception area with glazed eyes like shell-shocked soldiers waiting for the students to finish and it all to start up again, I think to myself that it would be great if instead of making it work, we were actually asked to implement strategy and ideas that weren’t a bit broken in the first place.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, one of mine has just turned up 20 minutes late. I’ve got some pelting to do.

Tom Starkey teaches English at a college in the North of England. He tweets @tstarkey1212