Educating Essex takes a fly-on-the-wall peek at a Harlow secondary school. It may not be pretty, but the results are inspirational
"Sir, I feel like crying for no reason at all, is that normal?" ponders Sam on Educating Essex, (Thu, 9pm, Channel 4) the fly-on-the-wall series about Passmores Comprehensive, which is shaping up to be one of my TV highlights of 2011. Sam is a hulking, horizontally-fringed year 11 man-boy. Sam is sullen, volatile and cruel, then four minutes later, charming, soppy and huggable. He's witty and erudite, then one swipe of the hair later, dangerously wrong-headed, mean, nihilistic. "At your age?" thinks the teacher. Yes. Sam is a conundrum.
So is Carmelita, who would rather be excluded than give way to school policy and take off her jacket in a corridor. Or Vinni, who has decided he'd rather be in care than live with his family. They're not in the grip of a personality disorder. They're just teenagers. I might feel like merrily throttling Sam as I watch the footage of his daily drama harvested from 60 hidden cameras, but, that said, when I was Passmores age, I hated everyone (apart from my cat Sooty) and paraded about in a school uniform under a lurid pink floor-length raincoat, ripped fishnets and boxer-boots. I lived on a diet of bread rolls and salad cream, listened to The Queen Is Dead by the Smiths 10 times a day while weeping, refused to attend maths as we were all going to die in a nuclear war, and once bloodied my brother's nose in a dispute over the Gold Run section of Blockbusters. I was a complete tit. Let he or she who hath not ruined his mother's good pressure cooker dying clothes black with Dylon watch Educating Essex and cast the first stone.
Mr Drew, Passmores' stoic deputy headmaster, is a dab hand at stage-managing young people through this glorious, challenging, tit-head stage. He's determined to "deliver kids a future" (five or more GCSEs). It is a daily battle and Drew is the perfect squadron leader. Passmores' corridors are awash with septic DIY ear-piercing ventures, customised school skirts, puppy fat, gangly limbs, braces, acne ripe for squeezing, couples passionately snogging against noticeboards, screaming breathlessly "I love you" as they're parted by double French.
Drew stands in the centre of the main corridor, king of all he surveys, a one-man ciggie, phone and hoodie-confiscating machine. He is gloriously, hilariously pig-headed. You cannot beat Mr Drew in a battle of wills. "One of the problems we have with some children," Drew says, "is that they have simply never heard the word 'no' before." When a pupil refuses to comply with his instruction, Drew will follow his quarry around the school repeating the instruction in 187 different ways until he or she is too weary to resist. "Oh, piss off!" snaps 15-year-old Carmelita, eventually. There are mumblings about excluding her permanently ? and why not, since often it feels like there are 10 pupils at Passmore messing life up for the other 900 or so ? but no teacher truly wants that. Teachers know they're on a knife edge here. Lose them from learning now and lose them from society forever.
In this week's episode, Miss Conway works tirelessly to mentor Vinni, whose behaviour has spiralled since his parents split up, going from golden boy, child star of TV adverts and A-grade pupil to excluded and homeless in the space of six months. Simply life-enhancing telly.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/oct/01/educating-essex-grace-dent
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