A few weeks ago, a glossy leaflet with a picture of a carrot on the front dropped on to my doormat. The picture was accompanied by the question:

“What would it take to tempt you back?” At first, I thought it was something to do with an allotment I used to rent years ago, but no, it was a pamphlet from the Teacher Training Agency. As I was already “back” in teaching, it was soon jettisoned into the recycling box. But a glance through it made me wonder how far the agency is aware of what it’s like returning to primary teaching after a break of almost two years, especially for an ex-head.

Until 1999, I’d been head of a rural primary in Cambridgeshire. Over the eight years I spent there, the job changed out of all recognition. I had started with a mission, eager to create a “problem-solving” school; to develop what is now called “emotional literacy”, and to encourage the building of a “collaborative culture” that I learned about on various courses. It began promisingly enough - then these things called SATs started to make their presence felt. But I did what was necessary, and when the first league tables were published we managed a respectable showing.

The thing was, I had thought that that was enough. I also thought that we - the other heads, local education authority officers and advisers - were all on the same side. I had assumed, wrongly, that we shared an abhorrence of tests, tables and tick boxes. How naive. Over the next six years, the system evolved into the one we all - well, not all, some - know and loathe, one which is now seemingly endorsed by people who, just a few years ago, would have shuddered at the thought of testing four-year-olds.

So while I was burying my head in exciting stuff about accelerated learning and emotional intelligence, my staff were burying theirs in despair at my reluctance to get going with the literacy and numeracy hours. They moaned and whinged, and eventually I decided we would go our separate ways. I needed a breather, anyway - I’d not really been out of school since the age of five, and after 41 years I was starting to wonder what it was like out there.

I did a bit of training in group psychotherapy and neuro-linguistic programming. I taught some community education courses, mainly parenting skills. I entertained at some local retirement homes, and even did a spot of busking. I topped up my earnings with a bit of supply work, which began to become more frequent and, lo and behold, it was not long before I was back in the ring, on a temporary, one-year contract.

I was pleased to be in a school that seemed to share the same values as me, was interested in innovative practice, and which had a great view from my classroom across the fields towards a distant pub. The head and I had a wonderful discussion about models of learning and holistic approaches to teaching - great, I thought, the system has indeed moved on.

But after almost two terms as a full-time teacher, I am already exhausted. The workload is ridiculous, and seems the same in most schools - every lesson planned in detail, often including separate learning objectives for various parts of the lesson, and all lessons differentiated into at least three separate groups. They all have to be evaluated and the evaluations acted upon. I don’t need to elaborate, do I?

Although I never asked my staff to plan so frequently and in such detail, I can now look back to three years ago when I was a head and understand why my teachers became cheesed off. Heads and their staff (even though I did a fair amount of teaching as a head) inhabit what can best be described as parallel universes. They work side-by-side in the same building, but in terms of daily experience are worlds apart.

We all know that education changes - the frequent complaint, justifiably, is about constant change. But children, fundamentally, don’t. The children I now teach are a source of frustration - and delight. They are there, beaming, at 9am, needing to be taught, controlled, encouraged, helped, listened to, talked to. When the classroom door opens I can feel the energy burst into the room. And at 3.30pm, or thereabouts, the energy leaves, taking most of mine with it.

I now understand why, when I was a head, my staff seemed to lack enthusiasm for 4pm Thursday discussions about the importance of playing baroque music at the start of their lessons, or how they should plan to meet a variety of learning styles as well as abilities. They were knackered.

Despite my continued enthusiasm for such innovations, my thoughts at the end of the day are usually: Whose turn is it to cook tea tonight? How soon can I leave without appearing unprofessional? What the hell am I going to do about literacy tomorrow if the photocopier still isn’t working?

It seems that the job of teaching children has come to be seen by many of those not actually teaching every day as something almost minor, something that can even get in the way of the real job of “managing education” in schools. I used to believe, and still do, that good teaching is a wonderful, creative act. The managerial culture dominant in schools is producing a regularised, ordered set of procedures and policies - not to mention lesson plans - which must be followed to the letter.

It is a system that is crying out for subversion and, ironically, that is what will keep me in education, probably as a part-timer or in a consultancy role. There is nothing like the satisfaction of deviating from the “learning intention”, which is usually something boring, such as “we are learning to use capital letters” to explore whether we think mermaids really exist. If I feel especially wicked and sense the children are tired, I might skip the maths plenary and get the guitar out for a couple of songs. It beats busking - at least the children listen.

This is really what creativity is about, isn’t it? It’s not just another subject, such as art or music, to be welded on to this lumbering thing we call a curriculum. It’s a whole way of looking at and thinking about the world, a new and refreshing approach that challenges existing ways of seeing and doing. This is why children are so good at it, and it is what I used to love about being in the classroom.

I love the children I teach, but I feel I’ve just climbed back on to a conveyor belt, one that could safely take me on to retirement. But I like to travel at my own pace, and I like to know where I’m going, and why. I’d also like some control over where I am headed, and to take time to enjoy the view occasionally.

Whingeing on and knocking back a couple of bottles of Merlot on a Friday night is not the answer. It means you have a hangover all day Saturday, then Sunday is taken up with planning the week’s literacy and numeracy. Then it’s Monday and round the conveyor belt goes again. I’m counting the days till I jump off for the second time.

But what interests me most is that some of the children are jumping off, too. Some are falling off. I feel for the ones who don’t seem to fit in with the current way of doing things, the ones who also stare dreamily out over the fields rather than at their learning target. Once they are off the belt it might be my job to help pick them up and show them another way of moving forward. Which is why I am training in child counselling and psychotherapy; I think I will enjoy that, and I hope I may be of some use. And it should earn me more than busking.

Mark Edwards was teaching full-time in the Home Counties at the time of writing. He is now pursuing a “portfolio workstyle”. Email: mark4ed@aol.com