ABSTRACT
Having survived my NQT year, I naïvely assumed that the job in the classroom would get easier. In my second year I met 10 set 4. They were a bigger group than one would have liked given the range of educational needs and behavioural issues. Their science teacher did no practical work with them, their Maths and English teachers insisted on a Teaching Assistant (TA). They were broken up for option subjects. This was RE – important enough to be compulsory yet not important enough to get a TA; they were doing a GCSE short course against their will, and their only lesson was last thing in the afternoon. It was a very long year.
