In between two exams this week, a 17-year-old explained to a teacher how she needed to break-up with her boyfriend.

The teacher’s answer was exactly the tonic needed. Boys were like buses, she said. “You don’t chase them. You don’t wait for them. And there’s always another arriving in 15 minutes’’.

Yes, the answer might not have ticked every politically-correct box. Or even be true. But it was this handful of words, sandwiched between exams, that was needed in that moment.

That’s one of the many marks of a good educator – and one we don’t talk about enough.

Sure, it’s important for a teacher in front of the class to know content, but how does that help the child who does not want to learn. Or who doesn’t believe they can learn.

And yes, it’s crucial they understand best practice and mandatory reporting and every childhood label attached to every single student – but those snippets of conversation, in school corridors and lunchtime duty – can be the real game changers.

My youngest daughter graduates next week – and decided during her last school year that she held a passion for Maths. One teacher, in one school, can deliver that. Thanks Mr C.

Other teachers show off the attributes that don’t add to their pay packet every single day. The teacher, who is sick, but still found time to email students with last-minute tips, and her vote of confidence in them. In our house, it went down a treat.

Money can’t buy any of that sort of care.

Or others – the teacher who admits they cannot sleep the night before an external exam because they are living the anxiety of each of their students; the teacher who corrected practice papers all weekend; the teacher who sent a note home telling parents how proud they should be of the daughter he taught.

Thanks to every single one of them, the length and breadth of our state.

And yes, there are those teachers who should be forbidden from entering a classroom (and I’ll keep that for another column), but the vast, vast majority of educators pack their lunch and head to work each day, to make a difference.

It was my Maths teacher, a long time ago, who changed my trajectory by convincing me that university was not beyond the reach of my family. He knows I’ll owe him, until the day I die.

We all have those stories that show the quality of an educator lies as much in how they deliver lessons – on economics and life – as in what makes up the content of them.

How do you put a price on that?

Now, we have a handful of inquiries underway into how we plug the teacher workforce drain, how we train better teachers, and how we make sure our top students choose – and stick – to teaching.

But why don’t we start with the good teachers we have? What would encourage them to stay? What is the antidote, do they think to the exodus from their staff rooms?

Where’s the inquiry into what they are being paid? Or the unfair contract system which forbids them from even accessing bank mortgages because their positions aren’t permanent? Or how we might ensure they are resourced and confident in delivering lessons inside and outside the classroom?

Education has been disrupted, like every other profession. And how we value and compensate teachers needs to reflect that.

Once upon a time, an educator was charged with teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, and students learned – often by rote.

Tapping into a student’s analytical skills, acting as agony aunts and coaches and part-time parents, or being advisors on everything from organisational skills to relaxation was not in a teacher’s job description.

So let’s streamline all the inquiries and start by considering the modern-day role of our teachers, and whether that fits the purpose of the education system we want.

No doubt, such an inquiry will show some teachers are bringing in an extra lunch for the primary school child they know doesn’t have enough to eat, and that others are using their own money to buy stationery supplies.

It will also show that an “R U OK’’ on a Monday morning might be all a student needs to focus on the class ahead.

And that a comment on boys and buses, with a smile, might be enough to lift the spirit and marks of a teen girl who feels up against the world.