Jayne Dowle: TV show educates us all in reality of school life in an ever-changing world

Nevertheless, a new report brings interesting context to the debate. Two-thirds of the adults questioned by The Challenge Network charity agreed that the kind of school you go to makes a crucial difference to your life chances. More than half believed that one of the major reasons why parents choose to educate their children privately is to separate their sons and daughters from poorer children.

What must those parents think of the isolation unit at Thornhill, where errant pupils are punished in solitary confinement? When they hear a teacher talking about sexting? When a teenage girl comes to school with her eyebrows shaved off? When a boy is excluded because he has been in trouble with the head teacher at least 70 times? When that head teacher looks as if he could efficiently separate a fight in a nightclub, never mind spilt up a gang of kids having a mess-about in the toilets?

If Educating Yorkshire wanted to abuse the access that its cameras were afforded, it would ram home these crucial differences. It would reiterate that yawning gap between private and not-private. Remind certain parents exactly why they remortgaged the house to pay for the school fees. And yes perhaps make them feel ever so slightly smug.

It doesn’t. It is better than that. It goes beyond the reality TV cliché of reflecting back at us only what we expected to see. It is totally Yorkshire, and for that I am proud, but this is not Kes for the 21st century. This is an international Twitter phenomenon. It was trending within minutes of going on air.

Everyone who made a comment, from the teenage girls with opinions on shaved eyebrows to the MPs and education professionals, can claim a stake in the debate.

It would be easy to look at the unruly pupils, to sympathise with the pensioners complaining about being pelted with snowballs, and to draw a series of lazy conclusions.

However, Educating Yorkshire makes us all think. It makes us think about those differences between rich and poor, sure. It also makes us think about the similarities between all youngsters, and opens up further the discussion about where education is going. Unlike so much that happens in the classroom these days, it has no didactic purpose. It allows us the luxury of making up our own minds.

This is a world which is changing so fast no text book opinion can keep up. The schools our children attend reflect this. While the likes of Harrow and Eton carry on pretty much as they have for centuries, everywhere else is in flux. Independent schools are struggling to survive as parents feel the financial squeeze. Under the reforms led by Michael Gove, the hegemony of state schools is being challenged as never before by academies and free schools. Thornhill became an academy shortly before filming started, giving it greater freedom to run its affairs independently of the local authority.

These new “independents” are often looking to the established independent sector to help them create a new model of education. Indeed some already work in partnership, sharing the same ethos and values. Strict discipline. Proper uniform. A tangible sense of school identity. It’s all there at Thornhill, just as it is in any private school. In 20 years’ time, the differences so starkly isolated by that survey might be more than blurred around the edges.

I have to confess a personal interest. My own son, Jack, has just started at an academy in Barnsley. I don’t actually need to watch Educating Yorkshire to learn about what is going on in this kind of school. I just have 
to glance at the school gate and see the suited and booted teachers checking the pupils for blazers and ties as they file in every morning.

I just need to hear that Jack got 10 minutes’ detention on only his second day because he was late for a lesson.

I just need to recall our own head teacher’s welcome speech, in which he reminded us in no uncertain terms of his school’s zero tolerance approach to bullying. And I just need to bring to mind my friend’s son, who has recently achieved a top grade in A-level maths, to understand that developing the individual strengths of every pupil in this school seems to be an absolute priority.

I know what I think of Educating Yorkshire then, because I’m living it every day. I’m definitely interested to hear what other parents – and young people – think. I’m keen to find out what teachers make of it. I’ll be keeping an eye on Twitter later on.

What I really want to know, however, is what the Secretary of State for Education thinks.