I once visited, with a medical team, a new mother who lived on the Aboriginal settlement of Goondiwindi, on the New South Wales/Queensland border. It was her eighth child, and mother and baby were doing well. The hot sun seared the red earth, and the leaves of the eucalypts gave off a pleasant scent, while dappling the baked ground with shadows.

As the medical officer turned to leave, he looked back at the new mother and said, casually: “Is it true your children haven’t been seen in school for a week?”

“Achh!” she exclaimed. She gestured towards the open door. Sunlight poured into the darkened room – shafts of promise and leisure. “How can you expect children to go to school on a lovely day like this?” We were speechless. No one had a convincing riposte. We shuffled out, chastened. How, indeed?

It’s the same every year. The sun comes out and the days lengthen, and everything beckons towards a life outside. That’s the moment when your child walks through the door with a huge bag of books and tells you that they have no more lessons until exams. It’s up to you to keep them fed, watered, and sane. Failing that, you’ve only yourself to blame if their life chances are ruined by lack of parental support.

One of my children has arrived from university with six weeks to while away in Oxford before exams. Another is “finishing off” and plans to barricade themselves in their bedroom until post-exam Monday night Bridge.

And I don’t mean the card game but rather the Hythe Bridge Road Club. A third is preparing for school exams by watching the latest box set of Pretty Little Liars – practically a fulltime occupation once school's out at 4pm.

Teachers do a wonderful job in educating our young people. Their talents are not simply exercised in the imparting of specialist knowledge and exam success.

So much more is expected of them in terms of pastoral care, extra-curricular activity supervision and leadership. That’s without the recent tyranny of league tables’ shifting sands. It’s a wonder that when this workload is multiplied up to forty times by our collective offspring teachers are not the ones bolting for the door.

What is it that stops them? The seasonal urge to race away from their increasingly fractious classes, across the pre-Sports Day green playing fields of the great summer outdoors; vocal pursuit of the rainbow of better pay; more flexible hours and conditions. Most of all the autonomy that is rightly theirs? After enduring a tough training, escalating parental expectations and government interference, perhaps it’s ultimately the knowledge of the extraordinary impact their professional competence and admirable personalities will make on so many young lives.