Educating the East End

Seeing what our secondary-school teachers have to contend with (and can achieve) in the classroom is an eye-opener, as we saw in the brilliant observational series Educating Yorkshire. Even though they try to be inspirational and encouraging, it can be a struggle. “It’s really hard to balance the idealism with the difficulties of dealing with a bunch of adolescents,” says Ms Smith, head at Frederick Bremer School in east London. Trainee teacher Mr Bispham’s attempts to teach a year-nine class Shakespeare shows how frustrating and challenging it is (rowdiness, swearing, chatting, boredom – he gets it all) but how much he and his colleagues care oozes through the screen.