Back to the books with educating Manchester

We return to Harrop Fold Secondary School in Salford, Greater Manchester, for a new school year.

This new four-part series, which begins tonight and continues tomorrow, marks the first time Educating has returned to the same school – previous series have each filmed in different schools across the country including Essex, Cardiff, Yorkshire and the East End.

Nick Mirsky, Head of Documentaries at Channel 4 said: “It’s fantastic to be returning to Harrop Fold. It is an extraordinary school full of characterful students and a very dedicated team of teachers and support staff. And we are confident that everyone there has a lot more to tell us about school life in Britain today.”

As before, Educating will follow the drama of teenage life over the school year giving viewers a funny, loveable and warm insight into life in a modern British school.

Filmed continuously across the year – the events in this series took place in 2018 – there will be even greater opportunities than before to cover the experiences and the daily lives of HF students and the hard work of the staff.

Educating Greater Manchester’s previous run made a star of popular headteacher Drew Povey. However, as we will see in later editions, his career is left hanging by a thread after the school is put in special measures by Ofsted.

But before all that, we are introduced to a new batch of pupils and reacquainted with some much loved characters from the previous series. There is cheeky Vincent, who’s now going into Year 10 and claims he’s a reformed character and Year 9 Katelyn, who struggled to focus last time but now wants to get her head down.

In tonight’s first episode, the school’s Year 7s are already building a reputation for being the naughtiest yet.

Meanwhile, Jacob opens up about his struggles with dyslexia, and the school is on high alert after a member of the public calls in claiming to have seen a Harrop Fold pupil with a knife, forcing Mr Povey and his staff to instigate bag searches to find the culprit. Katelyn is desperate to become a midwife but keeps bunking off lessons, and Mr Povey worries that if she doesn’t knuckle down she will miss out. And the staff also attempt to crack down on pupils at the centre of a lucrative black market at the school, selling chocolate, sweets and drinks to their classmates.

The second episode is airing tomorrow night and sees GCSEs looming for the current head boy and girl, with the search beginning for new candidates.

A surprise applicant, Holly, talks candidly about her disability as she makes her bid for the position. Meanwhile, another Year 10 pupil, Jack, is regularly on the radar of the school’s behavioural team for his disruptive behaviour, and receives a final warning after making prank phone calls from a school office.

Finally, Mr Povey arranges for a gaggle of therapy animals to come into the school and help with issues such as anxiety and ADHD.

Year 7’s Paige is given Sebastian the Chinchilla to look after, and Katelyn is given Beanz, a border collie. But will they see eye to eye?

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