It's a shock, the transfer from teaching at a British state school to teaching at a small school in private sector Peru.

• Four days this week, teachers didn't turn up, or didn't feel like teaching. I was drafted, without preparation, to stand substitute. Why not? What's wrong? I get paid, don't I? What preparation could I need?
• A child turns up to take an exam, and is given the wrong paper. It doesn't matter, he hasn't paid for next semester's classes or his certificate anyway.
• A whole class (not mine) fail their exams. They get given a different exam, one even more moronic than the one they achieved 16% on. Why? We want their renewed subscriptions.
• Nobody invigilates exams. What does it matter if the students cheat? Results are paid for, not earnt.

The perpetually aggrieved upturned nose, the safe moral high ground of British state schools and their inverted snobbery seems very very far away.