Education primarily follows Otis Milburn, a student at Moordale Secondary School. Otis begins the series ambivalent about , in part because his single mother, Jean Milburn, is a therapist who frequently has affairs with male suitors but does not maintain romantic relationships.
Other students at Moordale Secondary include Eric Effiong, Otis's best friend and the gay son of Ghanaian-Nigerian immigrants; Maeve Wiley, an intelligent and rebellious teen with a troubled family past; Adam Groff, headmaster Michael Groff's son who develops a bullying nature out of his own self-loathing; Jackson Marchetti, the head boy struggling to meet the high expectations set for him; Ruby Matthews, Anwar Bakshi, and Olivia Hanan, members of a popular clique known as "the Untouchables"; Aimee Gibbs, an Untouchable who secretly befriends Maeve; and Lily Iglehart, a writer of alien determined to lose her virginity. The school is soon joined by Ola Nyman, whose widowed father, Jakob Nyman, begins a relationship with Jean. Otis's father, womaniser Remi Milburn, and Maeve's mother, drug addict Erin Wiley, later return to Moordale to reconnect with their children.
