The tipsy schoolteachers of St Trinian’s films make lovable comic characters hiccuping groggily as their charges run amok in the dorms. Fast-forward the heavy-drinking teacher 35 years down the line and you have the harsher realism of Jimmy McGovern’s television drama Hearts and Minds. Far from being a laughing matter, we now find an ageing English teacher with a very real problem, swigging vodka in the gents while his classes degenerate into anarchy.

Every staff-room has its drinkers, some more serious than others. There are the darts team stalwarts, the younger beer and curry brigade and the respected hierarchy who can, nevertheless, make a gin and tonic disappear in a twinkling at the Christmas social.

Like every other walk of life, the teaching profession harbours its share of those who have a drinking “problem”. Research done three years ago showed that 14 per cent of teachers exceeded recommended safe limits in their drinking habits. This compared with only 8 per cent of GPs who have a popular reputation for heavy drinking but who have far fewer days off sick than teachers. A more recent study places teachers behind lawyers and publicans but still ahead of medical practitioners in a league table of society’s drinkers. So what is driving some teachers to drink too much?

Certainly the accumulated stress factors of job insecurity, an ever-changing national curriculum and increased emphasis on performance may play a part. Sometimes teachers fail to break from the “binge drinking” culture of their student days but there is also an increasing belief that hereditary factors make some people more likely to develop alcohol dependency.

John, a deputy head in an Essex comprehensive, was one who equated hard drinking with a successful, ambitious life-style. “There were many reasons why I started drinking heavily but certainly one was that I thought it made me look good in front of colleagues. I liked to be in the centre of the round in the pub after a parents’ evening.

“Also the increased work load from school played its part. I would be doing school work until perhaps 10 or 11 o’clock at night and I couldn’t relax. It was as if my brain was racing. I needed to shut it down to just turn off completely so I’d drink scotch as a way of slamming on the brakes.”

Soon drinking started to intrude into John’s school day. “I was out of school a good deal, organising links with industry. I would never miss an opportunity to nip into a pub for a few quick drinks.

“Then, without really knowing I was doing it, I would make sure I had an excuse to get out of school on a Monday morning, when I’d be feeling shaky after a heavy weekend.”

John denies that he crossed over the narrow borderline into alcoholism. Certainly he was endangering his health and, in time, his career would surely have suffered. What pulled him up short was the arrival of a new headteacher. She told him in no uncertain terms that he stank of drink, was becoming forgetful and the children were laughing at his shaking hands and bleary eyes. If he did not get his act together she would take steps to remove him.

This blunt approach worked. Without resorting to counselling, John took up a fitness regime and completely re-structured his life-style. He now drinks no alcohol at all and last year completed three half-marathons.

Unfortunately, this self-help approach will not work for everybody. Sympathetic counselling in the work-place is the course of action advised by agencies working to combat alcoholism. Yet problem drinking is a great taboo across society and nowhere more so than in teaching. Heads are reluctant to confront members of staff who show signs of developing drink problems. To do so would be to question that teacher’s competence to work with children and could set in motion all sorts of complicated disciplinary procedures.

Julia (28) is an ex-head of geography who now makes a living selling computers to schools. She was one of those who suffered as a direct consequence of her senior management’s reluctance to acknowledge her drinking problem.

“I was drinking heavily long before I went into teaching,” she says. “I don’t think my drinking was caused by the job at all. In fact I found teaching compulsively interesting so it helped to keep me just-about on the rails during the week. Really it was at weekends that things got out of hand. I was sharing a house with a bunch of people in their mid-twenties and it was a classic situation of ‘every night’s party night’.

“The difference was that I simply couldn’t handle it. The others would get up bright and breezy on a Monday morning but I’d be wrecked and ‘phone in sick. I never had a strong head for drink and I think it was a weakness which was in-built.

“Things came to a head when I went on a weekend field-study course in Wales. I completely blacked out for just about the whole weekend. I didn’t do anything disastrous but the powers-that-be got to hear about it.”

Quite obviously Julia needed specialist counselling. Instead her headteacher recommended a stress management course. “It was about as much use as sending someone to physiotherapy for cancer. I didn’t need to do breathing exercises or learn how to organise my time. The very first thing an alcoholic needs to do is to accept that alcohol is the problem in his or her life. No excuses.

“In a way, the stress counselling was counter-productive because it encouraged me to look for reasons to justify my drinking. I can remember always having a couple of drinks before the course, just so that I’d be in the mood to relax it was pathetic.”

Later Julia did get the help she needed by attending Alcoholics Anonymous. But she also found it necessary to move away from the school, where she felt she would never live down her reputation as the staff-room drunk.

Heads have recently become more aware of the dangers of alcohol abuse and many have made their schools alcohol-free zones. For them, gone are the days of end-of-term lunch-time parties with the wine flowing freely. In some, punitive measures extend to forbidding the consumption of any alcohol during the school day, even away from the school campus. At one Oxfordshire school a teacher was amazed to be sent home without pay for the afternoon after the head smelt beer on his breath, following a “quick one” at the pub.

But schools could, and should, be doing more to recognise and help their problem drinkers. Alcoholics Anonymous would like to see management in the workplace “regard the problem drinker in employment as a sick person rather than a bad employee”.

A spokesperson for Alcohol Concern says: “Schools should provide a member of the management team to whom an employee can turn for help. That person should advise on the many agencies which exist to help people who experience difficulty in controlling alcohol consumption, so that one can be found which best suits his or her needs.”

It is time schools grasped the nettle and set up employer-alcohol policies along those lines, then perhaps fewer teachers would find themselves in Julia’s position developing a drink problem which threatened her health and wrecked her career.

Warning signs

* Needing to have alcohol at hand

* Getting into trouble because of drinking (eg driving, problems at work)

* Feeling angry when others discuss your drinking

* Making drink a top priority in your life

* Having to increase the amount you drink in order to feel the same effect

* Feeling sick, having the shakes, sweats (morning or night)

* Having accidents or injuries because of drink

* Other people telling you that they are worried about your drinking What to do

* Try and keep track of your drinking

* Count your units

* If you are drinking too much, try and cut down

* If you can’t, seek professional help. Drink-line is the national alcohol helpline, which will provide telephone counselling and direct you to your nearest alcohol counselling service. Tel: 0345 320202

* Alcohol Concern: Waterbridge House, 32-36 Loman Street, London SE1 0EE.

* Alcoholics Anonymous London Helpline: 0171 352 3001