Closing the Gap

Closing the gap: A term used in the British education system to describe strategies that reduce barriers to pupil achievement and ensure future opportunities. With knife crime, drugs and gang-related activity on the rise, British school-children face far more challenges outside of school than anything they come up against in lessons. HUGH FULLER is a Royal Marine turned secondary school teacher; a man desperate to make a difference for his students. Completely disenchanted with the results-centred education system and political correctness of modern society, Hugh is a man on the edge. His daughter, OLIVIA, is a pupil at the school in which Hugh works. In with the wrong crowd, a school-mate of Olivia’s is stabbed to death by a member of an organised crime gang run by the vicious, but surprisingly self-conscious, MICHAEL MOONEY. Far too close to home for his liking, Hugh decides that the only way he will ever make a significant impact on the youth of tomorrow is to change the environment in which they are being brought up. With completely contrasting views on justice, Hugh’s wife, ISLA, is an ambitious Detective Chief Inspector in the police. A workaholic who, unintentionally, neglects her family, Isla heads up the unit investigating the murder. When Isla falls asleep at her laptop, Hugh steals the data of all known members of Mooney’s gang. Tasked with ‘closing the gap’ for students at school, Hugh thinks outside the box and recruits the depressed, revenge-obsessed father of the murdered school-boy, ARTHUR DICKINS, paving the way for a parent-teacher association like no other. Right under Isla’s nose, Hugh and Arthur take to the streets and, one by one, target Mooney’s gang members in a bid to teach them a lesson. However, whilst there is an element of compassion in Hugh’s teaching style, Arthur is out for nothing but blood, revenge and death, sucking Hugh into an increasingly dangerous situation that puts Olivia, the whole school community, and his relationship with Isla in serious jeopardy. Will Hugh maintain his humanity? Or will he become an even bigger bully than those he set out to discipline? Either way, extra-curricular activities have never had stakes like this.