After Educating Yorkshire comes Educating Walthamstow

Channel 4 has announced it is to make reality series Educating Walthamstow, set in the Frederick Bremer School in East London.

Following in the success of Educating Yorkshire, Educating Walthamstow - whose title has yet to be confirmed - will use fixed-rig cameras to follow students and staff during everyday life at the school.

The Frederick Bremer School, which only opened in 2008, has below average GCSE results, but has made 'considerable improvements' under its new headteacher, Jenny Smith. English is not the first language for more than half its students.

Educating Yorkshire, set in Thornhill Community Academy in Yorkshire, pulled in 4.8m viewers making it the channel's highest rated show of 2013 and recently won a National Television Award and a Royal Television Society Award.

The school had a bad reputation and was among the six per cent of the worst performing schools in England, described in its 2007 Ofsted report as 'below average'.

But Jonny Mitchell (pictured) took over as headmaster in 2011 and the series demonstrated how he had managed to reverse the situation and pull the school into the top six per cent.

The series was followed by Educating Essex, set in Passmores Academy, in Harlow, Essex.

Nick Mirsky, Channel 4's head of documentaries said: "Educating is an enormously important part of our documentary output at Channel 4.

"Like 24 Hours In A&E and One Born Every Minute, it shines a light on the tireless work which is carried out, unseen, day in, day out, by our public services with warmth and humour.

"Frederick Bremer is a school which - although in a very different part of the country - shares with Thornhill Community Academy and Passmores a population of passionate and committed teachers and charismatic students."

Educating Walthamstow will screen as a 10-part series on Channel 4 later this year.

 

Press Association

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Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.