It was a strange and sad day last week when my wife and I called the staff into the music room to inform them that we had decided to resign from our posts as headteacher and deputy at the school. We did our best to explain our reasons for leaving. Nobody had seen it coming, and everyone was stunned. I couldn’t help feeling that we were letting them down.

The letter to the parents was even harder. We went through draft after draft until I was almost happy with it. Could it explain our reasoning clearly enough? What response could we expect? The next morning it was clear that not only had parents accepted our arguments but were wholly supportive of our decision, although many asked if we might be persuaded to change our minds. And as to the children, they remained as fickle and forgetful as ever. As anyone who has ever been told they are “the best teacher in the world” knows, a year later Mrs Smith will be taking on that heavy mantle in your stead. For most of the children it was very quickly back to business as usual.

Teaching is not an occupation that you can leave at the door when you go home at the end of the day. When couples are both in education the danger of taking the static and hum of a day’s teaching home with you is more than doubled. As headteacher and deputy we have found that we haven’t just brought the day’s problems home with us but have let school business permeate through our waking (and often sleeping) lives.

We could not accept being a part of a system that condemns as failures the majority of children at the age of 11

At first this wasn’t too difficult, as “a problem shared is a problem halved” often turns out to be true. But as the country was ushered on to the sunlit uplands of the shiny new coalition government, back in 2010, grim clouds were gathering for the teaching profession. Over the next five years we suffered the introduction of the phonics “check” for five- and six-year-olds, no-notice inspections from Ofsted, the new “Victorian” primary curriculum, the threat of forced academisation, pay freezes and cuts to our pensions. All to the demoralising backbeat of continuing criticism from politicians and the press, telling us again and again that we were not good enough.

Like many of our colleagues we adapted to the inevitable, endless changes, soaked up the abuse, kept our heads down and got on with the job the best we could.

Things turned from bad to dreadful last year, with the calamitous attempted introduction of the new Sats tests for seven- and 11-year-olds. As has been much reported, these tests are simply not fit for purpose. They test a very narrow band of knowledge, which in turn leads to a very narrow and dull curriculum. The high-stakes nature of the tests leads to a stressed-out school, from the headteacher right down to the youngest year 2 pupil. But the worst thing about them is their inexcusable unfairness. As children must achieve every statement to be awarded the “expected” standard, one slip can lead to disaster. A child with dyslexia can never hope to achieve that in writing. They are set up to fail. This is perverse, wrong and cruel.

By the end of the year we were seriously beginning to question why we were still in teaching. Was it acceptable to us to force young children to sit such stressful tests that they ended in tears and sleepless nights? Was this what we had come into teaching for?

The last year has seen things just get harder and harder, as more and greater challenges have come to undermine our core beliefs in education. Teaching is not just another job. For us, education is simply the most important element in society. Without it “things fall apart, the centre cannot hold”. Without it there is no future. To be living in a country where that idea is lost is shocking. The active and deliberate cutting of funding for education reveals a philistinism and complacency of staggering proportions. And where does the money go that is “saved”? What will it end up costing us in the long run?

School leaders have been forced, by budget cuts, to make life-changing decisions this year that will affect children, parents and staff. In our school, as in so many others, cuts to staff will impact on the most vulnerable children.

For us the final straw was the proposed creation of a new generation of grammar schools, and with them the reintroduction of selection in education. We could not accept being a part of a system that condemns as failures the majority of children at the age of 11. A system where children are encouraged to label themselves as failures is a broken system.

In the end there are two visions of the future, and of the future of education, currently vying for control. One is of a constant struggle, where competition is seen as the main driving force. The other is of a world based on cooperation, nurture and encouragement, where collaboration is considered the key to success. I know which I prefer.

The hope of becoming a small part of a system that developed self-confident, questioning and caring individuals was what motivated me to enter and to stay in teaching for the last 26 years. The vision of a world that sees every man for himself, fighting in the gutter over the last crust of bread, is what has driven me out.