Decoding CVs is a fine art, and it may only be on the third or fourth reading that it becomes apparent that the applicant has not taught A-level for 20 years or is offering a second subject in which they have no qualification beyond GCE. The writers may indeed conceal as much as they reveal.

But if this is so, and standard forms help schools to establish a candidate’s credentials, why not introduce a set of forms for teaching posts throughout the country? Why shouldn’t there be a nationally accepted form for a first post, head of department, senior pastoral, deputy head and head?

Ambitious teachers must waste hours form-filling. Few can be completed in less than an evening - at peak times of the year, teachers trying hard to get a new post can spend weeks doing precious little else.

Moreover, many schools complain that they receive “standard” letters of application which have little connection to the post advertised - no wonder when so much energy has disappeared into completing the form. Give us a standard form, and time and genuine consideration will go into the more useful territory of the letter of application.

My last two forms have been filled in by my husband, while I have wrestled with the letter; it was a sensible division of labour, particularly since the schools were in the same county and the forms identical. But the suspicion that there might be a graphologist at the receiving end of the form did worry me.

And why did I not dare risk a photocopy to one school? For fear of automatic disqualification, that’s why. And that’s ludicrous if I really feel that I could have done either job.

It seems every county has a different form. I have seen, for similar posts, six-pagers, four-pagers and two-pagers; two-pagers which are actually four-pagers, but the first two are in Welsh and for the English bits you have to turn the whole thing upside down and back to front.

Then there are vagaries in the boxes: some ask about absences from teaching, requiring you to come clean about, for instance, years out to raise a family; others give you two lines for qualifications - tough if you happen to have three. Or four lines for subsidiary subjects - worryingly blank if you did straight honours in a major subject, though that ought to make you better qualified for your subject.

How about no space whatsoever for part-time work? Filling in employment records with specific questions about “starting daymonthyear” and “finishing daymonthyear” is incredibly difficult if you did six weeks conversational French for the Women’s Institute or a three-month course in creative writing for the WEA.

Lack of recognition for part-time work is a major grumble for the female form-filler, as is discovering a box in which to record your “war and National Service record”. The forms are surely designed by men for men, whose careers are more likely to fit the boxes with ease. The quirky and unpredictable shapes of female careers are never going to fit as well as those of their male counterparts - I wonder how many men would make use of “years out doing other things: eg, raising a family”?

If the aspiring candidate currently treads a minefield of unpredictable and idiosyncratic forms, it will surely get worse.

If the pundits are right, and a couple of thousand schools opt out in the next two years, there may be an even greater proliferation. Lord help us all then.

Hilary Moriarty is a deputy headteacher.