Educating the East End

Episode 4 (1x4)

Air date: Sep 25, 2014

Being a head teacher often keeps Ms Smith awake at night. She has 900 pupils in her care and feels responsible for every one of them. Some of the students' family dramas can impact on school life, and in this episode, alongside Ms Smith, English teacher Mr Bispham and deputy head Miss Hillman have to find a multitude of ways of engaging with the kids to help them leave their sometimes unsettling troubles at the gates. The programme also meets Hazel, an East-Ender born and bred, and a non-teaching pastoral support worker at Frederick Bremer. She's the first port of call when kids are sent out of the classroom and can be found patrolling the corridor, walkie-talkie in hand, often notching up as many as five miles a day. She was excluded from her own school when she was younger and talks to the pupils in an open and honest manner; and in return the pupils respond to her. Her own experience of a personal family tragedy means she feels particularly close to those hard-to-reach students she works with.