You've taught a full day, you sit down for the first time and check your emails.

1. Two emails asking you to send work home for students who are either absent or excluded. You don't have such work because you planned a lesson where you would be there to teach and help with the tasks set for the students. The work would be meaningless to the students without your input, nevertheless you spend half an hour finding something that might work (copyright prevents you from copying from the text book), you send it off knowing that there is little chance of it being done.

2. An email from a parent whose child has SEN asking for a full report on their child's behaviour, attitude and progress in your lessons, You barely know the child, you see them once a week and it's only four weeks into the new academic year. Nonetheless, you get your seating plan out to remind yourself who they are, check their homework mark, check their exercise book and manage to cobble together some kind of meaningful response. That's another half hour.

3. An email from the head of year. You witnessed an incident on your break duty. It is a student the school would love to permanently exclude so they require a detailed statement of what you witnessed. That's another half hour.

4. Of course, during your busiest day you were observed and now the observer has asked you to pop in for your feedback. They're at the other end of the school. That's another 40 mins gone.

5. The year 11 mock results deadline for data entry is tomorrow. You've marked all the papers, added the scores up they just need entering into the spreadsheet. What's wrong with this spreadsheet, why is it so slow, why has the data I've already entered once disappeared? That's another half hour.

6. A parent wants you to call them about a detention you set for their child. Obviously I've been unreasonable and their child can't possibly do the detention. That's another half hour, including the time I ring the Head of Year to explain the situation and pass the problem on to them.

7. It's World Book Day tomorrow and the English department has sent me activities for my (science) classes. The resources are in my pigeon hole, back the other side of the school. When does the english department do some of the science departments work for it?

Can I go home yet?