Living with the Brainy Bunch: a lesson in how not to deal with Britain's failing pupils - review

Would children do better at school if their parents took a more active interest in their education? That, in essence, was the loaded question posed by Living with the Brainy Bunch (BBC Two), a not-so revelatory “experiment” to see if a few weeks living with A-graders and their families could improve the mindset of a couple of underperforming Year 11 students. 

We met 15-year-old Hollie, preparing for her GCSEs, who failed  to get a C in any subject in her mock exams. The cameras zoomed in on  her home life and a father saying: “We’re involved very little in Hollie’s education… You put your trust in the teacher to do the best job possible.” 

Then we were introduced to her fellow student Holly (described by her head teacher as “fantastic… your on the front-of-the-prospectus type child”). Holly’s home life was far more conducive to learning: timetables, activities, dinner-table fun taking turns naming Shakespeare’s plays.

The same process was repeated on Jack, also 15, who had received three exclusions and 105 detentions in the previous year. (Cue Jack’s mother:  “I work long hours… I don’t want to argue with Jack, I just want him to know he’s loved”). He was paired with his hard-working schoolmate Tharush who arrived in the UK a year ago from Italy and is already excelling, and whose mother didn’t hesitate to impose strict rules and structure. 

Did Hollie and Jack need help? Of course they did. Was singling them out – two students from a school of 800 – shining a spotlight on them and forcing them to spend an excruciating chunk of their GCSE year living with these shining examples of everything they were not, ever likely to provide that help? No, it was not.

Six weeks and a host of predictable mini-dramas later, including tearful meltdowns, confidence collapses and late nights out without permission,  it came as little surprise that no miraculous changes were wrought  in either of them. There have been some top class education-based  shows on TV recently, but this was  not one of them. Perhaps the people behind it should be forced to spend the next few months at home with  the makers of, say, Channel 4’s excellent Indian Summer School,  and see how they like it. 

If the participants learned anything or took any positives away from this mostly painful experience, it was down to their own resilience in the face of such unnecessary pressure.