Thanks Ruth. I really appreciated that. I'm tired of teachers being blamed for so many of society's wrongs.

I work in a failing comprehensive school. Despite this, I have never met such a totally dedicated set of people as our teaching staff. In what other job would anyone work for 8 hours then, after a day of abuse and threats, come home and work for another 4 hours? This is to help the pupils. Why else are we there? It's not for the money. The holidays are nice but we spend a lot of the holidays working - and, yes, I go to some festivals - but I know lots of non-teachers who go to more than I do.

It's really important to us that every child should achieve something at school, whether it be GCSEs or more practical skills like art. I know we fail some pupils and no-one is more upset than we are when this happens. I know people like to accuse us of not caring, being bullies, but we're not. Some are, but they rarely stay. Everyone's got their own 'teachers are bullies, they failed my child' story and, yes, we fail some - but that makes us try even harder to get it right the next times.

I obviously can't talk about individual pupils on this thread, which puts me at a disadvantage, obviously, but I do know pupils with severe learning difficulties who have done well at school and have been helped and guided by caring, talented teachers.

Yes, I will be retiring soon - but I have given local children 35 years - and thousands of them appreciate what we've done for them and how hard we work. I haven't given up on the pupils as I expect to carry on working at the school for a few hours a week, again for the benefit of the school and the pupils.