Tis the season to be jolly, unless you’re a teacher, in which case you are most likely a zombified wreck tenuously held together by caffeine and chocolate bars that aren’t even made of chocolate any more.

In the popular imagination, teachers finish at 4pm and have “all those holidays”. Yet at this point in the year, most I know are barely functioning. Colds are battled for weeks on end as we stumble through brief lulls in the day as though dazed, unable to string thoughts together. The half terms are, yes, a perk, but they are also a necessary buffer against complete burnout.

I am all too aware that teachers are taken as supreme moaners, forever griping about workloads while enjoying the sort of work-life balance other people envy. So I can only imagine the eye rolls and ocular strain brought on by recent pleas from the 4 Day Week Foundation that teachers in England and Wales trial a four-day week.

It is true that when the holidays arrive, I am not engaged in the same desperate scramble to find childcare for my children, but the reality isn’t that we........

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