Should teachers be role models?

The issue of teacher behaviour is everywhere at the moment, not least because of the sentencing of music teacher Helen Goddard for having a relationship with a pupil, and the news that three male teachers at Headlands School in Yorkshire were convicted of having sex with their pupils.

But these rare incidents - and they are rare - have once again focused on another issue, of whether teachers should be role models, and of how they should behave outside the classroom.

Teachers often get a raw deal, as some of those who read this blog will testify. I like to think that School Gate visitors are sane and sensible, but one teacher recently contacted me to say that she has found the torrent of abuse on here difficult to take (unfortunately she's taken it personally, which is all to easy to do in the scary world of anonymity and cyberspace). When I look back at the comments, there certainly are a huge number critical of teachers, along with an assumption that teachers are not clever, not hard working, unable to spell properly, and only doing the job because they didn't know what else to do. Some of this is obviously my fault - after all I ask the questions - but I still think that teachers get a very hard deal, probably harder than many other professionals. It's not an easy job, and yet people are always ready to jump in with criticisms.

So it's strange that while they are criticised on the one hand, teachers are also held up to very high standards of behaviour on the other. I'm not talking about the betrayal of trust carried out by those who have relationships with their pupils, but the idea that teachers should carry impeccable behaviour out of the classroom and into the outside world.

In any case, the world has changed. Teachers now seem to have more and more responsibility for things which used to be parental concerns (including the boundaries of how to behave).