Gareth Malone's Extraordinary School for Boys (2010)

Choirmaster Gareth Malone, who has no education training, tackles an eight week assignment of increasing the overall literacy level of Grade 5 and 6 boys at Pear Tree Elementary School in Harlow, Essex by six months overall, as, at this stage in development, boys notoriously lag far behind girls. The experiment is to see if different teaching methods are part of the answer. In consulting with teaching experts, Gareth embarks on an unconventional regimen that deals with speaking, reading and writing, the first which they believe is key to improving the other two. Gareth has to hit the right notes with the boys, those notes which he believes are: to make the learning fun for boys, to make the process competitive, and to add a sense of risk into what they are doing. Regardless of the on the surface results or non-results, the only measure that counts in the end is standardized test scores after the eight week process, those results which head teacher Chris Thurgood will use to determine if Gareth's teaching approach will be used in the future.