Description: A group of school leavers, predominantly white young women, devise questions to ask their teachers and their fellow students about the education system at Lewes Priory School in the 1980s. At the start of the video, a student and a teacher are sitting outside side by side in an interview set-up with the student holding up a microphone up to her teacher. The student interviewee explains that her fellow students have prepared questions for their teachers about the education system. The camera zooms in on the older female teacher, as the student questions her. She asks about school leaving age, whether there should be scope for more practical subjects in school, the division of different subject classes via sets, career advice after school, learning to drive at school. The teacher responds with her own experience with her son, where the emphasis on certain A-Level subjects can be too formal, and leads to other subjects like Art and Graphic Design being considered as less rigorous subjects.

The camera cuts to the same interviewee with another student in a similar set-up. She asks her the same questions. The student interviewee is camera shy – she giggles and answers, eyes averted from the camera. Then, there are intermittent shots of students looking at the camera, laughing.

In the next segment, in a frontal close-up shot, we see individual students standing against a red-brick wall speaking straight to the camera with a semi-scripted answer about their career ambitions and their CSE and O-Level subjects. One of the female students, Kim Farrell, mentions that she is one of the directors of the film, having shot it. Another student says she has played every part in the film and wants to be a secretary. Some students re-do and revise their answers.

In the next segment, the initial interviewer poses questions to a male teacher against the red-brick wall, largely repeating the same initial questions. At the end, she also asks, ‘Do you think we’ve failed school?’ He replies: ‘School hasn’t treated you well enough […] They haven’t tried very hard to find the best in some of their pupils. Written them off too early. I don’t think you have failed school, I think school has failed you.’

The next two interviews are with two male students who respond more flippantly when the interviewer asks their questions. The video cuts off in the middle of the second young man’s answer.