Yesterday morning, I just couldn’t bring myself to leave the house. I just lay there, weeping in the hallway with our dog nuzzling up to me in sympathy - or was it the cat? Or maybe it was nice Mr Turner from next door? I scarcely noticed. I just couldn’t see how I could go to my school and face another day of boorish senior leaders casually expecting me to go into a classroom and teach children. Who the hell invited the children into school? I may have to leave the profession if it carries on like this.

It’s an outrage. When I decided to take up teaching and make a difference, I never thought I would be required to teach, yet this is the sorry state of affairs now faced by thousands of fellow teachers. Everyone knows that teaching is a complete waste of our professional time. It adds hours to our workload and yet our spineless senior leadership team insist on it, apparently because of fussy parents and because Ofsted inspectors “like to see it”. Where are the headteachers with the backbone to take a stand and tell their staff not to bother with all of this teaching and learning? It’s all a nonsense and ridiculous.

Well, the above complaining is indeed nonsense and ridiculous, and yet it doesn’t feel a million miles away from some of the genuine “waste of time” complaints flying around. We teachers certainly do have a justifiable grievance over the excessive amount of work and pressure placed upon us today, but surely one or two of the recent protests about the content of our workload only serve to undermine rather than strengthen our case?

A complaint too far

The recent claim, for instance, that marking is a waste of time really does feel pretty close to arguing that teaching itself is a waste of time. An end to marking as we know it sounds lovely at first, but it is surely a workload complaint too far, even when put forward by writers who argue brilliantly on other matters. It’s one thing to lampoon (quite rightly) the pointlessness of multicoloured pen marking, but it’s quite another to deny the value of detailed marking in general. Many teachers are brilliant at formative marking nowadays and would argue that it’s the biggest difference they make.

There is plenty of evidence - in research and from our own personal experience as teachers and parents - to show that effective marking of written work is a key factor in helping children to progress, especially if the process includes students improving or adding to some of their work. Also, if we want children to undertake written work at all, it is pretty obvious that we need to read it and respond - even if it is sometimes a quick, purely motivational comment.

Arguing that marking is a waste of time is pretty close to arguing that teaching itself is a waste of time

Yes, the job of teaching may involve too much marking for our paid hours, but that is a different argument.

Similarly, there was another bizarre suggestion recently that “planning lessons” is also “a waste of time”. No, it isn’t. It’s obviously essential. As are parents’ evenings, which were also recently described by some as a “waste of time”.

And while I would physically mark, with multicoloured pens, other commentators who have claimed glibly that our burning of the midnight oil is somehow our fault for defining the job in such a way (whereas it’s actually because there really is that much to do sometimes), I do think there is a real danger in going too far down the “waste of time” track. Taken to its logical conclusion, the message we are in danger of bringing across is that all our workload is pointless, and that, therefore, so are teachers.

Stephen Petty is head of humanities at Lord Williams’s School in Thame, Oxfordshire