‘Are you sure you haven’t got any homework?’ A sure sign that the half-term break was coming to a close, was when I received, not an indistinct grunt, but a more considered, ‘Maybe a bit’.

The light of recollection dawned through a half term haze and we discovered that some teachers, with scant regard of the need for full time holiday R&R, had the temerity to set assignments. Despite passionate protestations that these could be comfortably completed after the return to school, half-term reverie ended abruptly at the weekend.

There is a fine and barely distinguishable line between being a supportive and encouraging parent and an active participant in homework. I first realised that I existed the wrong side of it when my son was at primary school. The children had been invited to design and model an Easter bonnet; the PTA were offering an inducement (aka a bribe) of an Easter Egg, the attraction of which sufficient to rouse my son’s enthusiasm. His first attempt at hat design convinced me that while he was never destined for a millinery career, his enthusiasm and creativity in elaborating the Easter theme was something that should be encouraged. The liberal appearance of chickens, dinosaurs and Lego spacemen in a lunar landscape, mysteriously omitted in the Gospel narratives, had resumed their rightful place on my son’s converted straw boater. As we approached the school gates, I realised that my encouragement for his efforts to breathe new life into a well-worn theme may have been misplaced. Either he was overshadowed in a class of prodigies, or some parents (many of whom now revealed themselves to be professional artists and garden designers) had been lending a liberal and generous hand in support of their ‘children’s’ creations. Homework, I discovered was a euphemism for creative, collegiate and familial effort in which one’s reputation as a capable parent, rather than one’s offspring’s emerging ability, was the subject being tested.

Over the years my education has been tested. Dinosaurs, I discover, were not great lumbering reptilian beasts, but colourful, feathered and small. The universe is comprised not of objects that you can see, but of matter that you can’t. And I have had to plumb long forgotten depths of subjects I had joyously abandoned. ‘L’addition, s’il vous plait’ is more than sufficient French to last you through a holiday; I have never needed to list the furniture in my bedroom to someone who doesn’t speak English, while the socio economic realism of modern geography leaves my description of an ox bow lake, high and dry; and I was a good 300 words short in my attempt of a description of an indistinct and poorly printed autumn scene.

My feelings of inadequacy as a parent are tempered by the thought that my son’s teachers can be reassured that his homework is all his own efforts.