It is almost a year since Laurian Bold, a 31-year-old chemistry teacher at Hollingworth Academy in Milnrow, Rochdale, died after falling to her death from a motorway bridge. Sinking under what was said to have become an unsustainable workload, the anxiety had become too much to bear. Prior to this she had been experiencing physiological symptoms including extreme insomnia and hair loss as well as clear mental-health problems.

The desperately tragic thing is that this was not an isolated event. One in 10 teachers now take antidepressants in order to cope with the increasing demands of their jobs. The statistics around alcohol dependency make for similarly shocking reading with a recent survey by the teachers’ union, NASUWT, revealing that 22 per cent of teachers had reported increased alcohol consumption in response to stress. Around 5 per cent were hospitalised as a result of work-related poor health.

No wonder, then, that the innumerable “train to teach” advertisements on social media are met with literally hundreds of comments from current teachers lamenting the realities of life as an educator. Some go further and implore would-be teachers to do something, anything, but enter the profession; tens and tens of teachers are attempting to dissuade and sometimes practically to beg their potential future colleagues not to do it. This issue is just not going away.