Just as the staffroom settles in to the routine of yet another year, an air of unfinished business appears. The question on everyone's lips is "why could all of this not have been finalised at the end of August?"

The principal calls a staff meeting. Unwilling to antagonise anyone so early in the school year, he seeks compromise. He is willing to take lunchtime supervision himself and pay the H Dip students to cover classes for absent colleagues.

The staff knows a good offer when they see one, so they agree, believing that it will be only for a week or two.

News from ASTI HQ gets more disquieting by the minute. September moves quietly into October.

The principal is still pacing the schoolyard. Bill, the newest H Dip student, is enforcing a rigid discipline in the classes he supervises. Now he rejoices in the name "Bill Laden".

Nobody can countenance the idea of parents taking over the supervision role. They try to imagine Ms McGurk from the board of management trying to get 4D to pick up the papers in the yard, to put uneaten lunches into litter bins and to save windows from flying footballs, with a cup of coffee delicately poised in a well-manicured hand.

It's all too much for Pat. His trained eye over the years has noticed the "loner" in a corner, the fifth years who indulge in a quick "snog" behind the bushes, forgetting that the leaves are beginning to fall, and the small groups gathered that he knows from instinct are "up to no good".

But there is no appetite among teachers for coming under the media spotlight once more, in the light of international tension and a deteriorating economic climate.

One way or another, decisions will have to be made before the Hallowe'en break. As discipline standards deteriorate, the better students start considering jumping a sinking ship and the less motivated start planning part-time jobs for afternoons when they know there will be no cover for absent teachers.