What an education…

16th Nov 2009

Laura Pow­ell dis­cusses the cul­ture clash in the new series of edu­ca­tional drama Water­loo Road

AT 8pm on Wednes­day night, I defy any aspir­ing teacher to do any­thing but flick over to BBC1. Make a cup of tea, relax and remain igno­rant of the BBC’s seri­ous mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the aver­age com­pre­hen­sive school. Either do this or think of an alter­na­tive career plan.

I know Water­loo Road is com­pletely fic­ti­tious, but it can­not be good to even think about the mis­de­meanours of these hormone-charged teenagers, who are exposed at television’s most pop­u­lar com­mu­nity school.

In 2006, the award-winning Water­loo Road opened the series aptly with Kaiser Chiefs’ hit I Pre­dict A Riot. The riot is cer­tainly con­tin­u­ing through­out this fifth series, which is set to be the most dra­matic yet. The first episode of series five opened with a bang as we are intro­duced to the John Foster’s pupils set to be tainted by the stereo­typ­i­cally unruly com­pre­hen­sive school stu­dents. John Foster’s pri­vate school was forced to close due to unaf­ford­able fees, and so we become wit­nesses of a rad­i­cal merge between the ‘posh’ and the ‘scuzzy’. The pupils’ incom­pat­i­bil­ity is set to pro­duce some inevitable fireworks.

Lind­say, whose mother was con­victed of her father’s mur­der on her first day at the cursed Water­loo Road, is the ring­leader of the JF aggres­sors and will not rest until this state school is usurped by the sup­posed supe­rior and more aca­d­e­m­i­cally tal­ented ex-independent group of students.

The first two days at Water­loo Road see an unfounded rape alle­ga­tion on school bad boy Bolton Smi­ley, fist fights between rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the two schools and not to men­tion 23-year-old Eng­lish teacher, Helen Hop­well, being vic­timised to the point of throw­ing her­self down the stairs in order to get pupil Michaela White excluded.

Despite Head­teacher Rachel Mason com­ment­ing in a clichéd way about the school’s great­ness, it is clear that par­ents want­ing a good edu­ca­tion for their chil­dren would give this school a wide berth. Hope­fully the pro­gramme has not been too detri­men­tal to gen­eral opin­ion on com­mu­nity school­ing, but the fact remains that the affec­tion we feel for the insti­tu­tion is one we’d rather pro­fess from afar. The pro­gramme goes beyond pre­sent­ing the aver­age dis­rup­tive day at school where trou­ble­some stu­dents are rude and par­tic­i­pate in the odd bit of bul­ly­ing. This school enters into the realms of gun crime, drug abuse, fires and murder.

Admit­tedly, the pro­gramme sat­is­fies our hunger for gos­sip and scan­dal and thus spices up mid­week tele­vi­sion. The stan­dard rumours that cir­cu­late around the play­ground in real­ity would have no foun­da­tion, yet the hearsay sur­round­ing the teach­ers of Water­loo Road seems to con­tain more than an ele­ment of truth. How­ever, whether it be Miss Campbell’s offence of smug­gling a child ille­gally into the coun­try or Miss Mason’s past life as a pros­ti­tute, the impro­pri­ety of these authority-figures’ back­grounds would surely not be a com­fort­ing thought to any par­ent hav­ing their child edu­cated at the state school.

Although stu­dents and teach­ers at Water­loo Road see John Fos­ters’ stu­dents’ atti­tude as the usual snob­bery deriv­ing from pri­vate school­ing, I can under­stand their con­cern. Call me a ‘goody two-shoes’ but if I was forced into an insti­tu­tion of such delin­quents, being edu­cated in a dis­rup­tive envi­ron­ment, I would not be too impressed. A for­mer com­pre­hen­sive school pupil myself, I feel that the BBC has prob­a­bly taken its rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the dif­fer­ences between pri­vate and state school­ing a step too far, but that won’t stop my Wednes­day nights being dom­i­nated by the bril­liantly enter­tain­ing Water­loo Road.