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The new term has barely begun and already there is evidence of a growing staffing problem particularly in London schools.
According to a report for the Department of Children, Schools and Families, new rules on teachers' obligations to cover for absent colleagues are expected to exacerbate heads' already extensive reliance on classroom assistants and cover supervisors.
Some of these, often retrained after jobs requiring little education, may be good at what they do.
But most parents want to see their children taught by qualified teachers, not ex-postmen and security guards. Tony Blair's agreement with the teaching unions in 2003 to take routine jobs like photocopying away from qualified staff by introducing more teaching assistants had its merits, and large numbers of new support staff have been recruited.
However, this has not prevented the crisis of recruitment and retention faced by the teaching profession, particularly in London.
The high cost of living and extra challenges of teaching in inner urban areas mean that in some of the capital's schools, a third of the staff have to be replaced each year.
The revolving staffroom door makes it hard for heads to build commitment and continuity.
Against that backdrop, the chances are high that missing teachers will be replaced by support staff, sometimes for much longer than the rules allow.
Today's report by Professor Merryn Hutchings states that as teachers see it, the introduction of assistants has not even succeeded in reducing their workload.
Raising support staff pay and skills to those of qualified teachers would plainly be unaffordable at a time when the public finances are in dire shape.
Instead, there needs to be a much more wide-ranging response to the problem of finding and keeping good teaching staff, including pay scales that better reflect regional differences in the cost of living and more flexibility for heads to pay what it takes to get the right people - since using ever-changing supply teachers can end up costing more anyway.
Otherwise, the rise in standards we need to see in our schools is not going to happen.
Waterloo waste
A short stroll from Westminster and Whitehall there is a vast, unused, designer railway terminal - the five former Eurostar platforms at Waterloo left empty by the transfer of Channel Tunnel routes to St Pancras International.
At a time when so many commuters face desperate overcrowding, it is indefensible that trains will not use the terminal until 2014.
Of course there have to be changes affecting the rest of the network in order in order to make use of the facility.
But this building represents extra capacity which London needs to sustain economic recovery and future growth in jobs and population.
And as shadow London minister Justine Greening points out, at least some new commuter services were promised by the Department of Transport as early as December 2008.
Transport Secretary Lord Adonis has made much of his round-Britain tours of the rail network, but he does not have to walk very far across Westminster Bridge to be reproached by the silence of Nicholas Grimshaw's elegant ex-terminal.
Princely rescue
As social entrepreneurs go, the Prince of Wales has been a successful one.
His Duchy Originals food range, from chocolate biscuits to cordials to Christmas puddings, has over the years generated millions in surpluses which are handed over to charities.
Lacking profits which can be ploughed back into the business, however, the company has struggled.
What a relief that Waitrose, pillar of the Home Counties high street and in its way a pioneer of employee-owned, alternative capitalism, has come to the rescue.
