Bunking off from class takes a certain amount of nerve and luck at the best of times. But when your school has been kitted out with wall-to-wall cameras and microphones by Channel 4’s Educating crew … well, let’s just say that no matter how far you pull your hoodie over your head, or how fast you leg it out of the school gates, the evidence is there for everyone to see. Not that Mr Hennessey needs to watch the tapes to know what Leah in year 11 is up to. He’s got her number – literally. Her attendance record is so bad that he’s resorted to calling her at 8am every day to remind her that yes, it is a school day, and yes, her presence is required.
Educating Cardiff (Channel 4) builds on the Bafta-winning template laid down in Essex, Yorkshire and the East End: rig a school with cameras – this time it’s Willows high school in Cardiff (motto: “Belong Believe Achieve”) – set them rolling, sit back and wait for the stories to emerge.
Some gags ease us in. “Where’s Switzerland?” “New Zealand.” “Why do we get called sheep shaggers?” Occasionally, the camera cuts to two emo kids silently looking grumpy, one of those deft, deadpan shots that reminds you how much of the wit of this show comes in the editing room. A gang of teenage boys shuffles through the playground. “It’s like a really bad outtake of Reservoir Dogs walking towards us,” mutters a teacher.
Headteacher Joy Ballard is there at the start of the day, standing by a mirror labelled “Check your uniform point”, which comes in handy when it comes to helping pupils who seem to have forgotten the finer points of the school’s rules. “What’s missing? Your tie. Come on, get a tie please.” It’s the epitome of no-nonsense teaching, with a clear sense of social justice underpinning her philosophy. “I don’t think it’s fair that your postcode can determine your life chances,” she says simply. No wonder she’s turned Willows around from being one of the worst-performing schools in the area.
Back to Mr Hennessey. Universally acknowledged by pupils and staff alike as Willows’ strictest teacher (“Do they like me? One word answer: no”), he is a head of house and teaches maths, but it’s Leah who seems to be taking up most of his time. Six months away from taking her GSCEs, she’s in danger of leaving with nothing. “It’s this school, I can’t stand it. It gets you pure depressed,” she confides in best friend Courtney.
Leah is also driving classmate Jessica mad with her incessant habit of whistling while everyone else works. “Just let us learn …” she sighs.
Jessica is another pupil who’s got her teachers’ attention. Not for her grades – she’s a high achiever who is more likely to correct a teacher’s spelling than to find herself in detention. But, as Mrs Ballard kindly describes it, her “quirky personality” is leaving her on the fringes. For Jessica, it’s a paradox: the popular kids seem to become cool by hanging out with other popular kids – but how did they become popular in the first place? The teachers come up with a novel solution, asking her to edit a new school newspaper. Sometimes giving a pupil a “job title stops them going in as themselves”. Despite being a bit outgunned by two chatterbox deputies, Jessica rises to the challenge: having a reason to talk to other pupils frees her from her insecurities.
Mr Hennessey keeps up with Leah. He makes sure she’s in lessons, chases her when she’s not, calls her home and keeps up the daily wake-up calls. Most importantly, perhaps, he tells her he’s not giving up. That – combined with a lesson in cold, hard facts from Mrs Ballard about a new system of fines for parents of truants (“A parent actually ended up going to prison for non-payment of these fines”) – seems to work, just in time for mocks.
The pairing is neat – little shifts from either end of the register. Jessica learns some social skills and Leah stops skiving. These aren’t massive bombshells in the grand scheme of things, but for these two girls, it’s not hard to see what a huge impact having someone steer them in the right direction will have. A little course correction here, a nudge there and they’re both on the way to growing up. As Mr Hennessey says of Leah, “She’s starting to think and move forward, which I suppose some people would describe as maturing.”
In fact, he gives us one of the bigger revelations. He left school with only two GSCEs: “ I can remember being in the kitchen with my mother, great big lad in tears,” he admits. It’s why he is so good at his job; he was one of the Leahs at his school, one of those stories that the Educating strand has been so good at telling. “From the moment they come to school to the moment they leave, that’s a massive responsibility,” he says. “That will keep you awake thinking, like me, they’re going to leave with an E or a fail or whatever, and there are no excuses, no hiding places … it’s you.”
