It’s obviously wrong for a teacher to bunk off school. However, if you are ever considering doing so, never rely on someone else.

A teacher working at a previous school drove merrily across England one Thursday evening for an extended weekend celebration. His lodger was given the responsibility of phoning the school the next morning to report the official “stomach upset”. The real upset came, however, when the lodger forgot to make that all-important call.

With the teacher inexplicably absent and no reply from the house, our melodramatic deputy head characteristically ran the local hospital A&E - and then the morgue. With no injured or dead teachers on the slabs that morning, she then requisitioned me - a humble NQT on a non-contact - to accompany her in driving to the absentee’s home. I was given the rather ghoulish job of “checking the ditches” along the way.

Teacher truancy

When we reached the teacher’s house, his trademark battered-beige Ford Sierra obviously wasn’t there - it being about 150 miles away by now - and a helpful neighbour recalled “something about him going to a wedding”. The deputy now had a strong whiff of where the truth lay and quietly raged as we drove back to school. When the lodger finally remembered to ring, mid-morning, it was embarrassingly too late. The official “stomach bug” tale did not sit comfortably alongside all the other evidence accumulating. Our colleague faced some tricky questions upon return - partly from the senior team but mainly from a merciless staffroom.

Inexperience had let him down.  He was a hooky rookie and the world of teacher-truancy is rarely kind to the novice. The more seasoned practitioner leaves nothing to chance. He or she would never risk involving a lodger. Always ring the school personally with a well-honed “ill voice”. The old hand will never touch social media on their away day - so easy for one single message to fall into the wrong hands. Similarly, if they are attending a live televised event (Wimbledon or the cricket, say) they always take a big hat and sunglasses, thereby avoiding the fabled humiliation of exposure-by-camera-zoom. (We all know one of those stories.) In some instances, they cover up completely and go as nuns or superheroes - conspicuous yet anonymous.

The one thing, however, that does tend to expose the faker on the staff is that 99 per cent of colleagues never, ever behave in such a way. This is why we always know who they are. In fact, the real problem with staff attendance is that most of us do not take enough time off.  

Far more common are those of us who refuse to be away, even when we have been ill enough to take about a week off. We announce, as if we are real-life superheroes, that we have “not missed a day of school in over twenty years”, yet we really should not feel proud. I feel a fool to have tried to keep this “record” up. We have infected countless colleagues on days when we should have stayed at home, thereby causing far more damage and disruption than the occasional hooky-player in our midst.

Stupid stoicism

We infect colleagues’ minds too, with our stupid stoicism in the face of illness.  By repeatedly turning up in our lumbering, debilitated state, we spread our diseased way of thinking to others - germs of guilt that cause other fevered colleagues to make similarly poor decisions to come in regardless of their health.

We justify our obstinate selves with the hoary old excuse that “there’d be even more work to do when we get back”, even though most of the work set in our absence could be much more usefully marked by the students themselves upon our return. Besides, maybe our classes might finally discover a little independence and self-reliance if left with just some guidelines and a cover teacher for a lesson or two. We over-attenders are probably over-attentive, too, so everyone might benefit from our taking this opportunity to “let go” - we should see it as a form of professional development. A trait of us over-attenders is to delude ourselves into believing that we are in some way “irreplaceable”. Sadly, we are usually alone in thinking this.

This Christmas, I paid for my stubborn, continual cold-defying attendance during the last two weeks of term. By coming in when I should have stayed at home, I not only spread more germs but also picked up some kind of flu for the holiday. When not in bed, Christmas was consequently spent turning away delicious food and scaring younger relatives with my grey, zombie-like presence at board games.

So my New Year’s resolution is simple: to start being away from school more when I am ill. I hope other misguided martyrs join me. 

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

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