Outside the syllabus

Rose arrives at the school for 3 months of work experience expecting observation, routine, and clear boundaries. She understands how institutions function, and how to behave within them.
James teaches English because it is sensible. Because it is stable. Because the writing career he once imagined has narrowed into something theoretical rather than real. He believes in structure, distance, and the safety of prescribed texts.
Their connection is quiet and unexpected.
As mentor and student move through classrooms, lesson plans, and the rhythms of the school day, meaning gathers in the margins-through shared language, careful conversations, and what is deliberately left unsaid. James finds himself returning to writing he thought he had abandoned. Rose begins to see literature, and herself, differently.
Set within a British secondary school, Outside the Syllabus is a restrained exploration of authority, ambition, and interpretation, asking where education ends and influence begins-and what happens when the line between them is no longer as clear as it once seemed.