STRUGGLING schools will get advice from an engineering company under investigation for the Hatfield rail crash. The Government hit its teacher recruitment targets - with a big surge in untrained teachers. The Department for Education - hot on promoting numeracy - appears to have badly miscalculated this year’s budget. A chocolate manufacturer is encouraging schoolchildren to eat more of its products ... as part of a sport and fitness drive. And schools are getting a virtual-reality kit to persuade teenagers that there’s more to opera than obese sopranos leaping from battlements.

Oh, and in the wake of the “historic agreement” on workload designed to make teaching a sought-after job again, we publish a 724-page TES, complete with five job sections - the second-biggest ever.

You couldn’t make it up. And you don’t need to: it’s all true. Parodists, please form an orderly queue at the Benefits Office.