It had to happen, didn’t it? After the railway workers, the train drivers, the nurses, the ambulance crews, the civil servants, and in all likelihood the junior doctors, here come the teachers – although not quite as enthusiastically as their union leaders might have wished.

The National Education Union, representing 300,000 teaching staff has announced strikes through February and March, in pursuit of an above-inflation pay rise, saying that the 5 per cent offered amounts to a pay cut, given the double-digit inflation rate.