Jockey School, Channel 4

Biança Barker's film was broadcast to coincide with the run-up to the Grand National this weekend, although one got no sense of where its subjects fitted into the horse racing world in general. In fact, one got no sense of where they fitted into anything other than a tickbox used by TV producers when looking for the next big idea.

Animals, troubled teenagers, non-nonsense adults trying to knock them into shape, school of hard knocks, last-chance saloon. It had all of these, but woefully lacked impact.

It followed three teenagers on the intensive 10-week jockey-training programme at the Northern Racing College near Doncaster. Of the three teenagers Barker followed - Stacey, Tyler and Shona - only the last named was in any way sympathetic.

Racing may be the sport of kings, but many of the youngsters at the College are from poor homes, or have had problems at school or with he police. As welfare officer Georgie said: “I believe we're here to give everybody a second chance.”

Stacey had been expelled from school and had a problem with anger and aggression (even with her own mother), and Tyler, who is from a Traveller background, left school at 14 and struggled with reading and writing. Shona, meanwhile, had not been on a horse in two years since hers bolted and she fell into a barbed wire fence. What they had in common was a love of riding.

The instructors run a disciplined ship, and the early starts and strict rules – lights out at 10.30pm, at work by 7am, maintaining a super clean yard and tack – quickly took their toll on some. Malcolm, the course leader, is a wonderfully gruff Yorkshireman who takes no nonsense from anybody, and his staff approach their work in the same way. They've seen it all before – cheeky, hormonal, sex-obsessed teenagers who have never done a day's work in their lives - and know that, however much help they give some of the youngsters, it will never be enough. As Malcolm said of the attention-seeking Tyler: “He thinks he's going to get by on his charm... what little he's got.”

Their firm-but-fair approach gets results; the course is respected in the industry (although we were never told this) and even stroppy monsters like Stacey and Tyler clearly did some growing up during the filming process.

But frustratingly, for such an interesting subject, very little was explained either about the course; the working day, who paid for it, what educational qualification the students graduate with, and so on. Neither was it explained what sort of jobs its graduates might apply for once they had completed the course, as only one in a hundred will go on to race professionally. Barker either assumed some knowledge of the industry on the part of viewers, or didn't consider any context worth sharing with us. She was trying to do too much in the space of an hour and was not helped by some poor editing.

The College deserved a better film than this, and a series is needed to explore the good work it does. The course can, as we saw with the lovely, shy Shona, turn lives around. She may not be riding in the Grand National any day soon, but by the end of the film had determined she was going to be able to ride her beloved horse again, and work with horses.