No. of series 3 | ||
Running time 60 minutes (including advertisements) | ||
That'll Teach 'Em is a British reality television documentary series produced by Twenty Twenty Television for the Channel 4 network in the United Kingdom.
Contents
Concept
Each series follows around 30 teenage students as they are taken back to a 1950s/1960s style British boarding school. The show sets out to analyse whether the standards that were integral to the school life of the time helped to produce better exam results, to the current GCSE results and to compare certain contemporary educational methods with modern ones (e.g. vocational vs. academic focus for the less "gifted").
As part of the experience, the participants are expected to board at a traditional school house, abiding by strict discipline, adopting to 1950s diet and following a strict uniform dress code.
After four weeks, the students then take their final exams, produced to the same standard as contemporary GCE O Levels.
There were three series of the show, the first airing in 2003 (recreating a 1950s grammar school and featuring academically high-achieving pupils), the second in 2004 (a 1960s secondary modern and the academically average or poor) and the third and final series in 2006 (a 1950s grammar school again, this time focusing on science and with single-sex classes).
For the third series, a spin-off series, That'll Test 'Em, aired on More4 after the main programme. It saw pupils featured in the That'll Teach 'Em episode just aired being quizzed in competition with their parents on topics that they should have known well after their time in 1950s education.
International adaptations and distribution
The format has been adapted in France, Spain, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands and Chile. The international rights are distributed by DRG.
Series 1
The first series of the show was filmed over 4 weeks in June, 2003, at the RGS High Wycombe. It featured 15 boys and 15 girls who had just sat their GCSEs.
*Denotes was expelled during the series