Gareth Malone's Extraordinary School for Boys

Choirmaster Gareth Malone is taking on a challenge unfamiliar to him: increase the literacy of British boys, who, at elementary school levels, lag far behind girls. This literacy includes reading, writing and speaking, the latter which Gareth believes is the key to the other two. His eight week assignment will take place at Pear Tree Mead Elementary & Nursery School in Harlow, Essex, where he has been hired to teach the thirty-nine year 5 and year 6 boys three days a week, the other two days per week where the boys will return to their co-ed classes with their regular teachers. This job is despite Gareth having no formal training in education. After speaking to professional educators, Gareth believes what he has to do is threefold: make what the boys see as work, fun; add a sense of competition into the learning process; and add a sense of risk into the learning process. Gareth learns that the boys have a variety of reasons for their on-the-surface disinterest in the subject, from fright, to frustration, to boredom to simple dislike. Gareth has to get the school's head teacher, Chris Thurgood, on board with whatever his proposals, which may end up seeming unconventional. Chris' task for Gareth is to increase the boys' reading level by six months. With Chris' approval, Gareth takes two major measures: take the learning to a more appealing locale, namely outside; and have a competition against the school's girls, namely in a debate, on topics of interest to the student body as a whole. The latter event may backfire on Gareth if the boys lose, winning which to Gareth is not the goal.