Just read this on the BBC website. The irritatingly-named “credit crunch” is going to affect us all, I think - and if it goes on for long, then I worry about how people of my generation will be able to buy a house at all, especially as many of us are setting out into the adult world already weighed down by the student debt we were so encouraged to take on.

What surprised me more about this article, though, was not that hardship grants to teachers have increased recently, nor that they have risen by 70% in the first three months of this year. What I find incredible is that we need a charitable foundation to keep teachers afloat. Surely it’s just bizarre that a country like the UK can value its teachers so little? I know this is true of many public-sector workers - nursing springs to mind as a forever underpaid job. But these are people who all have a minimum of four years at university (while nursing did not used to require a degree) - in the future, that will be four years of student debt. Can the government really continue to allow teachers, and everyone else on public salaries, to struggle to afford the cost of living?

I’m used to people saying that Classics teachers are unnecessary, or a luxury, or not really for the public sector. It’s valued hugely by some, and not at all by plenty of others. But it seems that even the “core” subject teachers are not being treated as they should be - as intelligent graduates, with skills they could easily take elsewhere.