SO there is a shortage of teachers is there? No wonder.

For years the job of educating our offspring was highly respected. Many budding academics worked hard to aspire to this responsible and much-coveted position.

Teachers were pillars of the community on whom we relied to give our children the best possible start to their chosen careers.

Sadly, because of do-gooders and Government cut-backs, the teacher's job resembles little of what it was 20 years ago.

Thanks to the 'spare-the-rod brigade', discipline in schools is almost non-existent. There are an awful lot of unruly, disrespectful children these days and the teacher can do little about it. Except suffer in silence.

Should a teacher do anything more than look sternly at a misbehaving pupil they could lose their jobs. Why?

Because most so-called modern parents have no idea of proper parental control. Then, when a problem arises, there is adamant refusal to accept their child could be at fault.

Likewise, teachers of today spend more time attending to increasing mountains of paperwork that once would have been undertaken by others - time that could be put to better use doing what they were trained to do which is teach.

If the Government stops expecting teachers to be business-orientated accountants and parents of unruly children started exercising the correct discipline, we would see fewer teachers leaving the profession.

Who would want to remain in a job where respect counts for nothing and where time that could be better utilised teaching is taken up with bureaucracy?

John Ward,

Pinfold Terrace,

Tollerton, York.

Updated: 10:52 Thursday, August 30, 2001