Now pay attention schoolteachers: your country needs you.

The British Security Service MI5 is seeking to recruit teachers to serve as intelligence officers in the fight against terrorism, espionage and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Where once the service recruited Oxbridge graduates via a meticulously planned tap on the shoulder and ex-SAS men via shady meetings on shady park benches, MI5’s HR department has lately looked elsewhere for its operatives.

Lawyers and former City workers have been screened and assimilated into the service. Personnel chiefs now appear to believe that anyone who can survive double geography on a Friday afternoon will prove useful in the fight to uphold national security. They have placed an advert in the TES in an attempt to lure the finest men and women from British common rooms to serve Queen and country.

“You may not realise it but life has given you the skills you need to be an MI5 Operational Officer,” says the advertisement.

It is vague about what other qualifications teachers possess, though the work is thought to be similar in many respects to maintaining discipline in a Year 10 maths class. Most teachers are used to identifying potential troublemakers through a discreet system of profiling and breaking up potentially dangerous “cells” by getting them to sit on different sides of the classroom. When the threat to destabilise the established order is serious, they are known to resort to detention of suspects without trial for a period of time after school. Many are also thought to be deadly with a piece of chalk from 20 yards.

The MI5 advert does not mention these skills, perhaps for fear of alerting enemy combatants to the full capabilities of its new cadre of recruits. Instead it stresses the formidable people skills that British teachers develop.

“Your experience of dealing with people means you can build trust and relationships with all sorts of individuals, which makes you the ideal candidate forsecuring the information we need to protect national security,” the advert says.

Teachers are quite used to moving into new environments, quickly establishing the rules of engagement, the number of people who should be allowed to visit the lavatory and what constitutes the correct PE kit.

Responding to the advertisement, the TES observed that: “Jet-setting, espionage and national security are not usually associated with a career in the classroom.” It notes that: “Those at the chalkface might not be overly tempted by the money. The salary is £35,425 depending on skills and experience, about the same as a secondary teacher who has been in the job for some time.”

The service appears to hope that teachers will be drawn to apply to the agency by the promise of serving Queen and country. Or the gadgets. Or the women, who are widely imagined to emerge from the sea in bikinis holding large shells.

Many teachers are thought to be sympathetic to the idea that it is only a few people who are spoiling it for the rest of us. They are expected to take the fight to the terrorists, making it clear to al-Qaeda that they will be there all day and it is, after all, their own time they are wasting.

The right stuff

— Miss Trunchbull from Roald Dahl’s Matilda would have made a formidable spy. She was single, built like an ox and unafraid to use torture when absolutely necessary

— Who needs waterboarding when you have the hypnotic powers of Gillian Cross’s swirly-eyed Demon Headmaster? He is opposed to free thought and free speech, so would flourish undercover in totalitarian regimes

— Charles Chipping, or Mr Chips, would disarm adversaries with his octogenarian charm and would not be afraid to apologise for his mistakes in letting a terrorist slip past him. It’s always the quiet ones

— Harry Potter’s mentor Albus Dumbledore is the perfect man of mystery. His wizardry, ambiguous sexuality and ability to change appearance would make the perfect cover

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