Exit through the crèche

Concurrence payments are additional remuneration - up to about 15 per cent extra on top of salaries - that principals can get for duties performed beyond their normal responsibilities. This could include recruiting international students, running a school creche or special projects.

School boards must apply for clearance for the payments via the ministry. The cash comes from respective schools' operational funding.

Another source said one change being mooted following the audit included payments having to be authorised by the full school board in future, rather than by just the chair.

Evidence, if it were needed, of the pervasiveness and corrosiveness of managerial culture: every state school in the country relies on the teachers and other staff giving their time freely for extra-curricular activities and on the voluntary assistance of parents; yet principals demand additional remuneration for doing something that is not on the job description.

But, we will be told, it is all about the recruitment and retention of talent, about leadership. Our managers deserve and expect adequate compensation, and will go elsewhere if they do not receive it. And then where would we be? Rudderless and leaderless, unmanaged, ummonitored....

Bliss would it be in that dawn to be alive; but to be young would be very heaven.


Meanwhile, it is 1972 - taking drugs is still fun and Lemmy still has his looks: