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MY FAMILY has been easing itself into a new school year by viewing Harry Potter’s progress through Hogwarts. The nine-year-old devoured the books over the summer, so is intrigued by how the movies match up.

Watching, I am continually amused by how rackety Professor Dumbledore’s staff recruitment is. Does he ever seek references before appointing a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher? Even the ultimately heroic Snape regularly slaps Ron Weasley. A Muggle helicopter parent wouldn’t let that fly.

In life — and in fiction — the most memorable teachers are not necessarily the mealy-mouthed ones. ‘He had liked her; not everyone had’, is Kevin Coulson’s initial thought on his former maths teacher, Mrs Kitteridge, when this doughty, difficult woman insists on clambering into the passenger seat of his car as he contemplates suicide.

Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer-winning Olive Kitteridge is a brilliantly rounded portrait of a flawed, forthright, unflinching woman.

The vain, self-deluding Jean Brodie is equally memorable. ‘Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life,’ declares the titular character of Muriel Spark’s The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie.

This classic is both an adroit study of class-riven Thirties Edinburgh and a chronicle of how a bright, tragically unfulfilled woman tries to use her sway over a handpicked cohort of girls to shore up her social life and position, and cultivate intrigue.

Ricky, the protagonist of ER Braithwaite’s autobiographical 1959 novel To Sir, With Love, is a more traditionally heroic figure. In postwar London, the Guyana-raised former RAF engineer only tries teaching after being rejected on racial grounds for other jobs he is qualified to do.

Assigned an East End school, he is dismayed by how disrespectful his students are. But after he lays down boundaries of behaviour, a mutual empathy and respect develop. A good example of how a strict teacher can be fine, even fun, when consistently fair.