You all loved Educating Essex and Yorkshire right? Well good news kids, the **series is back tonight on Channel 4. And, as was tradition with its predecessors, it'll leave you simultaneously crying and laughing into your dinner every week as you get to know the students and teachers from Frederick Bremer School in Walthamstow, East London.
Having had a sneak preview we can guarantee you won't be disappointed with this series, which in its first episode explores the trials and tribulations of a new teacher getting to grips with the classroom; plus we get to know a group of best girlfriends who're making plans for their future.
Ahead of the series hitting your screens, we caught up with headteacher Jenny Smith, aka 'Miss', who reminded us what it was like to be a teenage girl at that awkward stage between child and adulthood, and how the addition of social media has changed everything.
I love the new series of Educating - is that you dressed up as a lion in the opening credits?
Yes, that is me in the lion costume. It was World Book Day.
That’s amazing! So did all the teachers get dressed up?
Yeah, I think it will get shown in a later episode but all the teachers get dressed up as characters from literature. I wasn’t just randomly dressed as a lion for a day!
And in the first episode we see that cupboard in your office full of heels. I really love that.
Yeah, there’s a lot of shoes in that cupboard!
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So why did you want Frederick Bremer to be involved in the programme?
Well one of the reasons we wanted to do it was to dispel the myths about London teenagers who are often portrayed as wearing hoodies, and part of gangs and carrying knives and that’s so far from the reality of our kids. We really wanted an opportunity to bring to life how intelligent and funny and aspirational our kids are. And I think the programme will go a long way to dispelling all of those myths that are out there.
I’d imagine it was a difficult decision?
I mean, certainly it’s not an easy decision to make. And it’s certainly one we didn’t make quickly or lightly - there was well over four months' discussion and consultation before the decision was made to move forward and in that time, we visited the two previous schools and they came in and visited us.
Do you think any of the students or teachers changed their behaviour knowing they were being filmed?
I mean once the cameras are in, obviously for the first couple of days I think people spent a little bit more time doing their hair and their make up than they might normally - but schools are such hectic places that actually you don’t have the time to stop and think. It really was business as normal.
So the first episode focuses on a group of teenage girls, which reminded me of all the issues you’re dealing with at that age. How far do you think social media has affected the issues previous generations have dealt with?
I certainly think that social media has added another dimension for being a teenager and I think it has a particular impact on girls. And it’s something we work with our girls a lot on. The instantaneous nature of social media, both in terms of your ability to be able to communicate very quickly, but also the perception that women and particularly young women have in social media - it’s very hard to grow up with.
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Why do you think it is has more of an impact on teenage girls?
To generalise, girls and boys access social media in different ways. But in terms of a lot of the girls, the instantaneous nature of communication is very, very important to them. And it has a lot of advantages but there’s also perils associated with it that as you see in the programme, teenage girls are not fully aware of until they make the mistakes [in the first episode we see one student posting an indecent photo of another student online, before swiftly taking it down]. I think when I was young we wrote poison pen letters and chain letters and things like that. It’s a whole different dimension when you’ve got social media that connects you to thousands of people in seconds.
Are there any role models that you think are particularly positive for these young girls? Or particularly negative?
I think both. I think that social media is providing a whole host of really phenomenal role models, particularly for young girls. When you look at people like Malala and the anti-FGM campaigns, which have been predominantly viral campaigns, I think that’s been really powerful. A lot of young celebrities use social media as their main form of communication and I think there’s a lot that’s very positive about it, but there are also dangers. And I think the way that particularly young women are often shown in the media and in social media – it’s quite challenging to grow up with that kind of image. It puts a lot of pressure on girls to constantly be thinking about the way they look, the way they form, the way that they show themselves. And girls, I’m afraid, feel that far more than boys do.
I guess it’s about keeping that communication open - in the opening credits you can see the teachers mingling in the corridors and talking to the students. I mean I don’t remember that kind of thing at my school!
It’s very different from when I went to school, when schools were quite sterile, cold places. You went in and you did what you were told and you were very thankful for it. Whereas now schools are very, very friendly, we’re very visible around school. Those little moments of checking with kids day in day out is really important. And pupils in the school feel that they’re known and they feel like they’re valued and that is what makes a difference and it means that we do pick up on issues quite quickly.
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Follow Helena on Twitter @HezzleHazzle
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.