Thank you — that's very kind of you to say. It's easier for me to watch in some ways because I don't have any children (although I have nieces and nephews, younger sisters who are still children, and of course many of my friends are parents, and I care a lot about the environment in which these children are living and learning), so I was able to watch at more of a remove.

As I emigrated from Australia to the UK as an adult, I don't have any personal experience with current UK schools, but anecdotally from friends who are parents here, or who work in schools, it really is that bad. I have a friend who is a secondary school teacher — she now works in a posh private school, but her first teaching job over ten years ago was an extremely rough state school in a deprived area, and I remember her telling me, among other things, that she caught two twelve-year-old kids literally having sex in a cupboard. I'm sure Dreamwidth friends who have more recent experience working in UK schools can chime in and confirm that the depiction is accurate. There's a whole mess of various social factors (many of which are alluded to in the show) that have got us to this terrible point.