There is a wonderful Chinese proverb: give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. The key word here is ‘teach’. Few among us doubt the importance of education for a functioning, cohesive Britain, let alone realising your own full potential. But is it just me who wonders if our education system is losing its way?

Before I go further let me make one thing clear. The above question is not a criticism of our hardworking teachers, school support staff and teaching assistants. Despite facing years of underfunding from central government, our educators work miracles every single day. And it’s not just children, parents and grandparents who have reason to feel grateful. The whole of society benefits from a well-educated population, not least business.

However, some recent stories have set off alarm bells rather than school bells.

First off, a tale of two realities. In one reality, all people write (and speak) in a slightly different way and that includes punctuation. In short, your comma may not look exactly like my comma but we all get the idea, don’t we?

Apparently not. In the recent KS2 SATs a storm blew up about thousands of children being given low marks because the exact shape of their punctuation did not comply with the government’s strangely stringent reality of what a comma or semi-colon should look like.

Petty stuff, you might think. But as Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), commented: “We now operate within a testing culture which appears focused on catching young children out rather than recording their achievements.” In short, a system that narrows rather than broadens children’s minds.

I, for one, worry too many high stake assessments linked to punitive OFSTED criteria are spoiling students’ experience of education, especially in a climate where schools are all-too-often judged by their position on league tables. Not to mention the danger that test results label children and become a self-fulfilling prophecy, limiting their life chances.

The problem is that such a system inevitably pressurises teachers to ‘teach to the test’ at the expense of risk-taking, exploration and creativity. Personally, my finest, most formative experiences of school had nothing to do with a desperate scramble for high grades and everything to do with the joy of knowledge for its own sake.

The second story that recently caught my eye also set alarm bells jangling.

According to statistics from the Department for Education (DfE), the national recruitment crisis for teachers is still gathering pace. In fact since 2011 a third of teachers quit within five years of training and more are now leaving than joining the profession on a year by year basis. To fill the gap there has been a 7 per cent rise in unqualified teachers placed before classes.

Of course like so many problems in society, the blame lies not with some natural disaster. Austerity policies after the 2008 banking crash have exacted a severe human cost from all kinds of ordinary people. The simple fact is that UK teachers work some of the highest hours in the world.

Recent analysis by the Education Policy Institute found teachers working 48.2 hours a week on average, including evenings and weekends. This is 19 per cent longer than the average elsewhere of 40.6 hours. Add to that yet another below inflation pay rise of 1 per cent (teachers’ pay has gone down by 15 per cent in real terms since 2010) and it is easy to understand their discontent.

The stress teachers have been put under is a sign of government incompetence. Who can blame them for seeking careers elsewhere? You only get one life, one chance to spend time with your children before they grow up.

True, the above are national stories. But we can be sure that what happens nationally affects York and North Yorkshire. It is high time we valued and rewarded our educators properly. Let’s teach to a different kind of test: that of encouraging a love of life-long learning for its own precious sake. After all, to live is to learn.