The process of retiring (of which I’m in the throes at present) gives rise to such guilty thoughts as: “That’s one problem I won’t have to deal with.”

I really try not to think that way: it’s unfair to those I shall leave behind at the chalkface. But, as my colleagues prepare to grapple with complex new data protection regulations that come into force next May, I confess to a sense of relief that I’ll be out of it.

I find a mischievous irony in the fact that these are EU regulations. We’re assured that Brexit will give us back control of our own laws and regulations: yet the same data protection regulations will remain in force after our separation from Europe, because our regulators think they’re appropriate and should continue to bind us.

This isn’t about the EU, then, but about the sheer weight of regulation that schools labour under.

Take Safeguarding. We all agree we must keep children safe: but doing so involves a significant administrative burden.

Concerns about terrorism and radicalisation have led the government to devise the Prevent strategy. Who could object protecting children from being brainwashed into following extremist ideologies? But there’s a cost.

The government constantly pushes more responsibilities onto schools. It can slim down its central bureaucracy - as it claims to have done - because it shuffles the administrative burden on down the chain.

As the government (rightly) sets out to protect employees’ pensions, every school in the country now has responsibility for the pensions of all those employees outside Teachers’ Pensions, involving complex and time-consuming work.

Private schools are nowadays hedged about by regulation. I think the Independent Schools Standards now involve more than four hundred measures. As a result, many have appointed full-time compliance officers in recent years. It’s a logical step, one you might say independent schools can afford to take.

But it illustrates the direction of travel. The government’s own schools don’t have to satisfy a set of standards in that form, but still bear similar responsibilities for safeguarding and health and safety, not to mention the production of copious data for the DfE - and, from next year, data protection.

I want my personal data kept safe. I bank online and pay nearly all my household bills in the same way. I have no idea how many firms or websites hold my personal data, so I want to know it’s secure. But at any cost?

Most regulations that bind schools carry with them a duty not only to do what is required but also to prove via a paper-chase that they are doing it. As a result, there is a constant risk that resources will be taken away from teaching and learning in order to conform to new, additional requirements.

When the new data protection regulations come into force next year, schools will have somehow to find the resources to satisfy them. Otherwise, they will face colossal fines, up to four percent of turnover.

It gets worse.

This heightened administrative responsibility hits schools at a time when funding is shrinking. If I hear Robert, the DfE’s spokesrobot, monotonously reiterate the statement just once more that government spending on schools has hit record levels, I shall scream. 

The figure is higher than ever because there are record numbers of children in schools. Nonetheless, cash per pupil in real terms is still shrinking. A financial crisis is growing in our schools.

It is a fault endemic to the government that it constantly imposes new measures, structures or regulations on its schools: and it never puts in the additional resources necessary to meet them. Each has thus the effect of another hidden cut.  

Meanwhile, the government turns its blind eye to the funding situation and, as former prime minister Jim Callaghan famously didn’t, blithely repeats, “Crisis, what crisis?”

Dr Bernard Trafford is headteacher of the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne, and a former chair of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference. The views expressed here are personal. He tweets at @bernardtrafford

To read more columns, view his back catalogue

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