The show follows the lives of staff and pupils of the eponymous secondary academy in Greater Manchester while tackling a range of social issues including trolling, the cost-of-living crisis, gender politics, bullying, being a child in care, bereavement, menstruation, County lines drug trafficking, the arts vs academic performance, being deaf, and manslaughter.
New pupils introduced in the fourteenth series included Billy Savage (Olly Rhodes), Boz Osbourne (Nathan Wood), Aleena Qureshi (Sonya Nisa), Lois Taylor-Brown (Miya Ocego), Luca Smith (Danny Murphy), and Jared Jones (Matthew Khan).
[3] Almost all of the students from the previous series return, with the exception of Inathi Rozani, Zanele Nyoni and Teddy Wallwork as Zayne Jackson, Jess Clarke and Declan Harding respectively.
Returning pupils include Noah Valentine and Summer Violet Bird as Preston and Tonya Walters, with Alicia Ford as their cousin Kelly Jo Rafferty.
Liam Scholes, Lucy Eleanor Begg, and Thapelo Ray portray Noel McManus, Caz Williams, and Joe's former foster son Dwayne Jackson.
Younger students include Hattie Dynevor, Chiamaka Ulebor, Zak Sutcliffe, Maisie Robinson, Tillie Amartey, and Aabay Noor Ali as Neil's daughter Libby Guthrie, Shola Aku, school troublemaker Schumacher "Schuey" Weever, his sister Portia Weever, Stacey "Stace" Neville, and Mollie 'Mog' Richardson.
Jason Manford joined the cast as Steve Savage, the new Headteacher of Waterloo Road, replacing Kim Campbell (Angela Griffin) following her departure from the school.
When he is caught smoking his own supply in the disabled toilets, Joe investigates a misaligned ceiling tile and finds a stash of class A drugs.
When a parent threatens to complain to Ofsted about Neil insulting her son, Coral pretends to be deputy head in an attempt to portray herself as a respected authority figure.
Kelly Jo, sensing that (her gran's) money is at the root of all of the problems, intervenes by taking the cash and redistributing it from the top floor of the school.
Pupils and teachers alike find cash raining down on them, but the lucky few later discover they aren't so fortunate after all, as most of the notes are monopoly money.
Val Chambers comes under pressure from Steve to produce a good set of mock exam results in A-level music.
When Noel, who has never been academically gifted but a talented musician nonetheless fails, Val questions an education system that values results over personal development and her role in it.
Whilst newly engaged Donte attends a recruitment event for budding teachers, replacement caretaker Jamie takes the reins.
Hoping the return of the item to its owner will finally get his tormentors to leave him alone, Billy hands it back to Schuey, who simply perceives this as a sign of weakness and continues to terrorise him, ordering him to take Dwayne's bike to a drop-off location where it can later be sold.
When the police escalate it to a missing persons enquiry, they question Schuey, who denies Boz being a close friend and remarks that it's not unusual for him to go AWOL for days at a time.
Billy, unable to handle the guilt is slowly unravelling, and even Steve is buckling under the pressure with constant flashbacks to the night of Boz's death and his part in disposing of the body.
Nisha's teaching methods come under the spotlight when Shola's father visits the school to address the decline in her Maths grades.
In class, Nisha singles out Shola and simply plays back a recording of the lesson on quadratic equations and leaves the room in search of coffee.
During the memorial being held for Boz, an increasingly fragile Billy, who is being haunted by visions of the dead boy, makes his way to the school roof to confront his demons.