Education Education Education

It’s May 1997.

The iPhone doesn’t exist, no one knows who Harry Potter is, Titanic is on the shelves of every Blockbuster and we have just won Eurovision. Britain is the coolest place in the world.

“First a Eurovision win and now Tony’s our new Prime Minister. I can barely recognize this country; you know I actually saw people smiling on the train this morning.”

At the local secondary school it’s a different story. It’s the last week of term and Tobias, the new German language assistant has just arrived in the UK. While political change occurs outside of the classroom, a revolution slowly starts to take place within it. Tobias is greeted
by a group of eccentric schoolteachers just trying to make it through the day, including Miss Belltop-Doyle who can’t control her year 10s and Mr Pashley who is trying to keep a confiscated Tamagotchi alive.

Speaking on this momentous day the Prime Minister, Tony Blair said: “At a good school, children gain the basic tools for life and work. But they ought also to learn the joy of life: the exhilaration of music, the excitement of sport, the beauty of art, the magic of science. And they learn the value of.