A new term starts at Fenn Street and this means even more trouble for Bernard Hedges. Apart from the day-to-day hazards of teaching 5C, he has to prepare his unruly bunch for their imminent launching on an unsuspecting world. As prospective school leavers, 5C have to consider their future prospects.

Bernard gets engaged and Abbott gets appendicitis.

Why does one set about weighing Fenn Street School? It seems that Bernard believes that acts like this will help prepare 5C for their entry into the great, wide world at the end of this term.

Duffy enters the embraces of the cold and harsh world outside school and finds it cold and harsh.

When Smithy falls ill in the country, Bernard sees Reigate in all its rustic glory. He is quite smitten and dreams of the idyllic married life there, but his fiance, Penny, dreams otherwise.

Maureen feels rejected, not only by Sir but now by Monsignor Sopwith.

Bernard has an annoying habit of being honourable - even when playing golf. But what of his pupils? When Duffy invites Sharon to a half-term Majorcan holiday, will the habit be catching?

When "Hank" Abbott, private detective, goes into action, he opens the cupboards that let out the skeletons. One produces a rash of honesty from Potter. The other makes Cromwell feel that Miss Ewell might yet be won back from Mr Sibley.

Bernard and 5C drop in at the Conservative Club and make new friends. Maureen also makes a new friend, but he is more interested in dropping out.

It takes a face in a thousand to star in an advertising campaign, but Bernard and Potter make it a two-horse race.

When Bernard hears Abbott's version of the facts of life - which can only be described as high fiction - he feels that it is time to teach 5C the facts of life in an adult way.

With the end of the school term approaching, most of Fenn Street's form 5C are already fixed up with jobs, but animal-loving Dennis Dunstable still has no apparent future. Then Bernard has a brainwave which looks like the solution.

As 5C break up for the very last time, they prepare to take life by the throat, the shirt, the vest or anything else they can lay their hands on.

Bernard and Penny dream of their wedding day: it should be the happiest day of their lives. However, Potter is chief usher, class 5C are guests, the meteorological department forecasts snow and there are those inevitable unforeseen problems.