Penguin Books Australia

A third of teachers leave within their first term on the job. This one wouldn't quit for all the world.

Meet Furious – sixteen, handsome and completely out of control. Nothing frightens him and no one can get through to him. Now meet Munchkin – a sweet kid with glasses who's an easy target and needs protecting. Then there's Seething and Deranged, two girls who are brimming with bad attitude; Fifty and Cent, who act like gangsters but are afraid of getting beaten up; and Stoic, a brilliant young mind struggling to survive. In the midst of them all, there is a bodyguard and bouncer, a counsellor and confidante, a young woman whose job it is to motivate and inspire them and somehow keep them out of trouble: their teacher. None will make it through the year unscathed. Some may not even make it at all…

Spanning a year of shocking truths and hard-won victories, of fights and phone-thefts, teenage pregnancies and the dreaded OFSTED report, this is the remarkable diary of an inner-city school teacher. Revealing the extraordinary chaos, mismanagement and wrong-thinking that plague our education system,  it is a funny, surprising and sometimes heartbreaking journey from the frontlines of the classroom to the heart of modern Britain.