In a schoolroom in Olde Middle England, everything was frozen.

The whole kingdom had been cursed by a wicked virus, and Prince Gavin of Scarborough had decreed that schools should forever open all windows to release all the bad air, despite the local soothsayers saying that there was nothing to worry about.

And, to make matters worse, hard-hearted Prince Gavin had cast a spell on the Keepers of the Public Purse and put a freeze on the meagre wages of all the teachers across the land. Only an act of true love could reverse his spell.

Anna, one of many young teachers on the verge of quitting, was sitting hunched over her quill and ink pot, waiting for the children to finish washing their gnarled and chapped hands for the seventh time that day. She tried in vain to recall what a normal day of teaching used to look like.

“When will this misery end, Prince Gavin?” she croaked through her mask of tears, a compulsory accessory at the time.

Covid and schools: Putting an end to frozen teacher pay

“Why don’t you go and ask him?” It was the voice of little Kristoff, a freckle-faced child, who was destined for extra catch-up lessons in reading, writing and use of the abacus.  

Anna looked up from her parchment of job vacancies, not realising that she had spoken out loud. She stared back at little Kristoff and at all the sad faces of the other children sitting in rows, who were wishing that they could do some bloody group work for a change.

And at that very moment, Anna thought of her big sister Elsa, and realised what she had to do.

“Yes, you’re right. I can’t just let it go,” she announced to them, grabbing her shawl and her clichéd teacher’s apple, and resisting the temptation to burst into song. “Come on, Kristoff. Let’s pay a visit to Prince Gavin and ask him when he’s going to put an end to all this frozen nonsense.”

“OK, Miss,” nodded Kristoff, as the cheers from the other children subsided. “But we need a comedy character to come along with us for light relief at a difficult moment.”

“Mmm,” said Anna, thoughtfully. “We’ll pick up Olaf the lollipop man on the way.”

So, Anna, Kristoff and Olaf set off on their perilous journey to the big city, over the school field, down the giant hill and across the treacherous new four-lane shopping-centre bypass.

“Wheeeee! This is fun!” cried Olaf, spinning his lollipop stick around and twerking in his fluorescent yellow trousers. “I haven’t been this far from home for over a year.”

On they went, down Lockdown Avenue, across Zoom Lane and along Lateral Flow Street until they reached the mighty river beside the Palace of Westminster, the tower of Big Ben sticking up like a giant middle finger.

Kristoff sanitised the door knocker, rapped loudly on the door of the palace and, in an unusual lapse of security, all three of them were ushered inside and upstairs to the chamber of Prince Gavin of Scarborough.

“Eh up?” said Prince Gavin, a Yorkshire pudding in one hand and a slice of Wensleydale in the other. “Stop tha mitherin’ and tell us what tha want.”

“Prince Gavin,” announced Anna, in her best teacher voice, “I can understand the frozen classrooms and the frozen learning over the last 12 months. But frozen wages? This year, of all years? I mean, COME ON.”

Gavin took a nibble of cheese and stroked his Yorkshire pudding, weirdly. “Well,” he replied in the annoying softly spoken tone that the great unwashed were now familiar with. “There’s nowt I can do, pet. Only an act of true love can reverse the spell of the big pay freeze.”

Anna gave the prince her hardest teacher stare. Kristoff gave a whimper, and Olaf hugged his lollipop tightly to his chest.

“But over the last year,” Anna finally declared, counting things off on her chillblained, ink-stained fingers, “we’ve taught our classes with little more than a strip of hessian sack to protect us, we’ve mixed with all the sickly children despite no proof from the physicians that it was safe, we’ve taught from our own front parlours, we’ve sorted the pox from the fever, we’ve recorded our lessons on slate after slate, we’ve learned how to teach via carrier pigeon, we’ve prevented children like little Kristoff from being carted off to the madhouse, we’ve worked through our holidays, we’ve planned a whole new catch-up curriculum and we’ve done it all professionally, enthusiastically and with a big smile on our exhausted faces. And if that’s not an act of love for the children and for our jobs, I don’t know what is.’

Prince Gavin sat up straight, and put down his Yorkshire pudding.

“Eeh, by gum!” he exclaimed. “I see what tha means. I didn’t think it through.” 

“You never do,” whispered Kristoff, who was on ye gifted and talented register. “None of you ever does.”

And with the magic words, “Oxford AstraZeneca,” Prince Gavin reversed his freezing spell and the Public Purse was magically reopened. 

Anna, Kristoff and Olaf, and all the teachers across the land, rejoiced and bumped elbows in an awkward, geeky fashion.

But, of course, they didn’t all teach happily ever after. After all, it was only a fairy tale.

Colin Dowland is a primary school headteacher in North London. He tweets as @colindowland