I went back through the chapters to make sure. One thing that makes this unnecessarily superficial is the fact that the parents' faces are NEVER shown. Like...why? Because the author is trying to make some kind of point that the parents are...unimportant? It just looks awkward.
Separately, I've said my piece about how it's contrived that all of these students have this traumatic history that all needed to get resolved before they could succeed academically. Fine, whatever. I've already said it, so I'm just mentioning it in passing now.