Educating Essex

Production

Educating Essex was commissioned by Channel 4's commissioning editor for documentaries, Mark Raphael, after the channel pledged an extra £6.7 million to documentary programming in 2011. It is similar to other fly-on-the-wall series broadcast by Channel 4 such as One Born Every Minute, 24 Hours in A&E, The Hotel and The Family, the last of which both director David Clews and series producer Beejal-Maya Patel had previously worked on.

After seeing a "quite dull" programme about schools on the BBC, Raphael was inspired to create a series which captured school the way "[he] remembered it". He chose Clews after watching The Family, which he found funny, an attribute he wanted his series to have. Clews was initially not keen on the school idea, as he thought it would be boring. However, he came round after visiting some, describing in particular how one pupil tried to pass off his mobile phone use as checking for testicular cancer.

Passmores Academy in Essex was chosen as the series' setting after the production team approached around 20 schools with good or outstanding Ofsted reports. This was eventually narrowed down to three after many denied or governors blocked the proposals. One of the schools that denied was Houghton Kepier School in Durham which had been given bad press in years previous after misconduct from staff member Adam Walker. David Clews stated that, "Passmores was always my favourite" as he hoped for "stories unfolding within the school". Regarding his decision to allow cameras into the school, Goddard said that upon receiving the phone call about the show, he had just given an assembly which encouraged pupils to take opportunities after the death of a classmate, and thought it would be "disingenuous" not to do so himself. Goddard received the support of the majority of Passmores governors, in particular by Community Governor Michael Hardware who, with previous documentary experience, provided some reassurance. Teacher Stephen Drew has described how he was initially very distrustful of the crew, and thought they were all "bastards" with "no morals" and "no sense of ethics", only wanting to make money. He did, however, begin to trust the team when they were honest with him and did not "cut any corners".

In order to make the series, over 60 cameras were installed on the school's premises during the October half-term and filmed for a period of seven weeks, monitored by crew members in on-site prefabricated buildings. Staff and pupils were also allocated 22 radio microphones, based on whomever the crew thought would provide the most interesting material. When the speech of those not wearing a microphone was included, it was often barely audible and was written out and overlaid on the screen. In all, the fixed cameras filmed over 1,000 hours of footage. In addition, the crew interviewed pupils in prefabricated classrooms, mainly at lunchtime and in groups to capture the "group dynamic feel" of school life. Members of the production team were also charged with gaining the trust of around 20 to 25 pupils by liaising and going home with them.

The autumn period was chosen as the production team thought it the most "normal" part of the year because the syllabus was being taught and pupils were not revising for their GCSE exams. As for fears that the presence of cameras would impact on pupils' behaviour, Clews said that pupils "mucked about" for the first few days, but soon forgot about the unobtrusive cameras. However, Goddard did not want to have cameras back, in case pupils began to misbehave because they were there; he said, "There's no media interest better than one young person's education". Channel 4 sought a new school to be filmed for a second series, and chose Thornhill Community Academy in Dewsbury to be the setting for Educating Yorkshire, to be filmed and broadcast in 2013.

Themes

The series covers a wide range of heavy themes, including a false accusation of assault against teacher Mr Drew by Camelita in the first episode, a case of bullying which moves on to cyberbullying against Gabby in the second, Vinni being taken into foster care in episode three and episode four focusing on Sky's teenage pregnancy by Liam. Episode five concentrated on the power of gossip and rumours, as Carrie's and Ashleigh's friendship breaks up and they reconcile. The sixth episode returns to Mr Drew as he attempts to get Mollie and her sister Charlotte back on the right academic track. The final episode features Ryan, a new arrival at the school, who has Asperger syndrome.

Reception

According to BARB, Educating Essex averaged around 2 million viewers for each episode. This included a peak of 2.11 million for episode 4, and episode 2 being the lowest with only 1.79 million viewers. The programme was popular with Twitter users: its hashtag "#EducatingEssex" was displayed before every commercial break, prompting over 100,000 tweets about the series.

The series received acclaim from critics. On Twitter, journalist Grace Dent hailed it as "one of the TV highlights of the year." Sam Wollaston from The Guardian offered high praise for the show, noting it was "a lot more interesting than Jamie's Dream School." He further complimented Mr. Drew's history class for being superior to that of the renowned historian David Starkey. Wollaston also drew a comparison to the structured reality show The Only Way Is Essex, describing Educating Essex as a "pure, observational, unobtrusive documentary," which he regarded as the ideal form of reality TV. Rachel Tarley of Metro praised the first episode in particular due to its depiction of Mr Drew, calling it "giddily enjoyable", and said the show was "the best thing on Channel 4 this year".

However, the series and participating Passmores Academy were criticised by the Daily Mail and The Telegraph: both said that those involved were portrayed in "an unflattering light", and criticised incidents in which teacher Mr King calls his pupils "scumbags", head teacher Mr Goddard uses an offensive hand gesture towards Mr Drew, and staff use profane language with one another; also highlighting the depiction of bullying, teenage pregnancy and "young girls caked with make-up", Andrew Levy and Lynn Davidson of the Mail wrote "What sort of example is this to set our children?" Nick Seaton, a spokesman for the Campaign for Real Education, criticised Passmores and its Ofsted rating, saying "If this is an outstanding school then it doesn't say much for the rest". Katie Jackson of The Sun also criticised the profanity, although she called the series "hilarious, heart-warming and sometimes hard-hitting".

Awards

In 2012, the series Educating Essex was included as a contender for the Broadcasting Press Guild Award's "Best Documentary Series". The programme's director, David Clews, was honored with a British Academy Television Craft Award in the "Director: Factual" section for his contributions to the show. It was also put forward for consideration in the BAFTA awards in the categories of "Factual Series" and "Audience Award". The same year, it won the "Best New Television Series" title at the Freesat Awards. In the latter part of 2012, Grace Reynolds, the senior producer-director of the show, received the "Producer or Director Debut" award at the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival. The succeeding year, the show bagged the "Best Documentary Series" accolade at the Broadcast Awards and was a finalist in the Grierson Award for "Best Documentary Series".