I work at the BBC in Bristol with a group of filmmakers who specialise in making observational documentaries. Last year I made a film with the Open University about a day in the life of the NHS called A Picture of Health, which went out on BBC ONE in April 2003. The Head of BBC One must have liked the result because she asked us to look at Britain's schools in the same way.

So, last September, our team assembled and we started the mammoth task of trying to work out who and what to put in the programme. My Assistant Producer, Esther Stone, used to be a Deputy Head, but most of us on the team were new to working in schools. Our first task, then, was to talk to as many people as possible working in the UK's schools and colleges, and to listen to what they had to say about education.

For two months we talked to as many different people as we could - teachers, heads, pupils, unions, academics - many people kindly spared us time whilst we fired questions at them. We also sat at the back of lots of classes in primary and secondary schools, up and down the country, to try and find out what life was really like at the chalkface.

The picture that we built up was a much gentler one than is often portrayed in the media. Most of the pupils we met were lively and fun, most of the teachers put enormous amounts of energy into their work. We found many frustrations; but we also found an extraordinary commitment and a sense of idealism which often survived despite the daily challenges.

During our research, we also had to get to grips with the wide variety of issues being debated in education today - standards, inclusion, teaching methods, behaviour and funding - as well as the diversity of educational approaches in the nations that make up the United Kingdom. Even within England it came as a big surprise to me to find the huge variety of approaches of different LEAs.

We weren't making Panorama, so the issues always took a second place to building a fair portrait of our country's schools. We tried hard to weave in the bigger story where we could but it is the great advantage of having a website attached to a programme which allows a deeper understanding of the complexities to be examined.

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