In the deepest recesses of a wet and cold January day, when the clocks have deemed it time to wake up, but your entire body and mind know that they are lying; when the marking pile has grown taller than you and the mock exam revision sessions are coming thick and fast...in those times of darkness, all good teachers dream of the hallowed light at the end of the Year 11 tunnel: gained time.

But, does gained time even exist anymore? And if so, what do you actually do with it?

Today, NQTs are told stories of days when, post-Year 11, you actually have time to eat your lunch and drink a hot cup of tea; times when going to the toilet isn’t reserved for twenty past three; times when you are able to mark a set of books within a week of the work in them being completed, because you have a tenable amount of students to deal with.

We all remember that day when we left school earlier than the final bus because the next day we had gained time, so could mutter those otherwise unprecedented words in the teacher’s vocabulary: “that can wait until tomorrow”.

If you are lucky to still get gained time, no doubt you will have ideas circling your head about refreshing the displays, finishing your “lists” and improving the levels of differentiation in Year 7 schemes of work.

No more gained time?

You might have grand plans of spending some quality time on KS3 planning and teaching in order to make them more consistent with KS4 – after all, without Year 11, the younger years can finally be the focus of your energies.

Maybe it’s time to make some funky videos to promote your clubs in September and to organise some tutor activities that aren’t just watching Newsround (again).

There are the dreams of making stronger links to primary schools and building stronger cohesion between Year 6 and 7; there are plans to do something outrageous like read some books about becoming a better teacher and then feeding the information back to the rest of the department. There are even dreams of having time to tidy your desk.

And yet, as time goes by, the delightful story of gained time seems to be increasingly becoming a myth. It is a tale to regale NQTs with; nothing more.

The lessons that were once dominated by a race to the exam get eaten up with cover, task-setting (which is often seemingly arbitrary), report-writing and an infinite stream of end-of-year admin. School life seems to be as busy as it ever was and, as usual, the tea goes undrunk and the packed lunches go uneaten.

The plans of how you will spend all that free time evaporate and you are left once more daydreaming about how, some day, things could be different.

Katie White is an English teacher in Devon