2. Storylines http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eWQ73-miUo&feature=related Main Storylines Social Issues – Ruth doesn't like her father working in the school because she feels left out, so she decides to walk off out of school premises and gets lost. Love – The head teachers daughter sleeps with one of the teachers and he doesn't realise she is in her school years because he saw her in a club which is ages over 18. Affairs – The Head teachers husband who is a teacher in the school is having an affair and his son who is a student in the school thinks he is having an affair with one of the teachers when he is having it with somebody else.

3. Central Characters Lauren Andrews - Lauren is in year ten and Sambuca Kelly’s best mate. The youngest sibling with four older brothers – she learnt at a young age that being a gobby little cow was the only way of being heard above the noise and coping in such a testosterone filled environment. However, underneath the lippiness, Lauren can be pretty impressionable and easily led. Lauren is starting to grow apart from Sam after feeling ditched when Sam spend her whole summer with a new boyfriend. Jess - Head teacher Karen Fisher’s middle child and youngest daughter. Jess is cool, sarky, confident and aware of how pretty and popular she is. Jess is full of contradictions; on the one hand involving herself in an adult relationship with a man who doesn’t know she’s a schoolgirl and on the other playing games to be popular and lying to her parents to keep their approval. Jess and Karen have a feisty relationship; Jess feels like she can never live up to Karen’s lost daughter, Bex. She has a complex home life, simultaneously resenting, whilst really missing her older sister Bex, who used to make family life bearable. Jonah Kirby - Jonah had been chafing under the restrictive bonds of home-schooling for some time. Home-schooled by doting parents who accept him for who he is, Jonah is always authentic. Unlike Jess he is comfortable in his own skin. His great sacrifice in the first 10 episodes is letting go of his close relationship with sister, Ruth; she’s not enough for him anymore. When Jonah meets Jess, he realises this is the girl of his dreams. He can see the good in her and is desperate to impress her... Jonah desperately wants the experiences of a normal teenager, however painful they may be.

4. Setting Much of the series takes place at Waterloo Road Comprehensive, a fictional co-educational, community school which takes in students aged 11 to 18. At the opening of the series the school was notorious for being "on the scrapheap" with poorly-behaved students and poor quality teachers, although it later passed its inspection to remain open. In series 3 it suffered a major fire and in series 4 it was demolished by a digger driven by the character Ralph Mellor.The real life location for Waterloo Road Comprehensive is the former Hill Top Primary School in Kirkholt, Rochdale, England. As well as external shots, the internal views of the school used in the series have also been filmed inside Hill Top. Other locations used include areas in and around Rochdale and nearby Manchester.