A teacher's role is more difficult now due to successive Government policies, society's expectations, and the way we're told to treat young people. Teachers now have to be computer experts, writing reports that will probably never be read in case the Education Review Office turns up. They're expected to be experts in their teaching field, but the teacher training leaves a lot to be desired. Here's a quote from a trainee teacher: "I swear to God—and I'm not lying—we had one 1½ hour lecture on how to teach children to read." That's unacceptable. Teachers have to be social workers, truancy officers, dieticians—making sure parents have chopped their apples into small enough bites—and behavioural experts, dealing with an ever increasing range of abusive behaviours in the classroom that only a few years ago would've been deemed unacceptable. It's a sad state of affairs when a student can tell a teacher to get "effed", be dealt with by the school as they see fit, only for the school to be made to apologise two years later. Teachers also have to be sports coaches and mentors, after school and at the weekends—and I could go on. The pastoral care expected of teachers is hard work, and most of it used to be done by parents—as did early reading skills—and they get thanked with a wage freeze. Then these teachers have to go home and be parents to their own kids.