Rumours flew around the school about the geography teacher and the sixth former, writes Fiona Tarrant. Were they or weren't they? "No-one could prove a thing," says my colleague, reporter Rebecca Smith, who went to school in West Oxfordshire.

"But after we'd left school we found out she started an affair with the married teacher. I remember he was very good-looking and all the girls had secret crushes on him but she was the only one who took it further than that."

Teachers have a tough life. Low pay, long hours, criticism for wearing corduroys and being too politically correct. They've had to endure violence and verbal abuse from pupils and now they face a bigger challenge as the Government plans to make affairs between pupils and teachers an imprisonable offence.

Then there's the controversy surrounding chief schools inspector Chris Woodhead and his comments that such relationships could, in certain circumstances, be "educative".

Last week the Oxford Mail exclusively revealed the story of Abingdon School matron Christine Barrington and her torrid affair with a 17-year-old pupil. Yesterday, she chose to spill the beans in a double-page spread in The Sun.

It's a hot story - the schoolboy crush that went too far and the sexy matron who should have known better.

But there's more. Newly-published research for the Channel Five soap Family Affairs trumpeted that one school-leaver in 20 claimed to have had a sexual relationship with a teacher and nearly half fantasised about teachers.

"One in 20 - five per cent?" asks an amazed John Mitchell, Oxfordshire County Council's education spokes- man. "There are about 80,000 school pupils in Oxfordshire. Five per cent of that is 4,000. We have about 4,000 teachers in the county. so assuming hypothetically that each of these pupils chooses a different teacher, every one of them is involved in a sexual relationship with a pupil.

"Do I find that surprising? Yes. On that basis, I am quite happy to put on record that I find the statistics both staggering and implausible."

Put that way, how can you argue? With the exception of Christine Barrington and the unsubstantiated rumours at Rebecca's school, it seems Oxfordshire does not have a problem with teacher/pupil affairs. Mr Mitchell goes on: "I think the county council would question the validity of this research and its findings. In the grand scheme of things, it is not an issue in Oxfordshire. We would be doing something about it if it was. And if it involved an under-age pupil, then it would be a criminal matter and would be taken very seriously."

But what about crushes? The county council doesn't issue any guidelines on how to deal with pupils' crushes, although it did tackle the subject on a course for secondary school teachers recently, which covered "sensitive issues". "We hope also that their training provides them with clear strategies to deal with this in a sensitive and appropriate way," says Mr Mitchell.

At this point another colleague, George Frew, interrupts my story to tell his tale of schoolboy fantasy.

"I was deeply in love with a teacher by the name of Miss Lightbody. It was my first experience of romantic disillusion. "The head of the art department was called Mr Day and I remember watching them go into the pottery room, where the kiln was housed, and shutting the door.

"When they went in, Miss Lightbody was wearing black tights. When they came out, her legs were bare. It shattered my illusion."

Somehow, I don't think that was the kind of sensitivity Mr Mitchell was referring to. George, on the other hand, would call it a hard lesson in real life.

Story date: Wednesday 19 May

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.