Jamie's Dream School, Channel 4

You might justifiably argue that Jamie Oliver’s lack of academic prowess (he left school with just two GCSEs – we’re not told what in) did him no harm whatsoever. Yet he’s keen that youngsters today should be switched on to education in a way that he clearly wasn’t. So he’s recruited 20 kids to take part in Dream School – kids who, like him, all failed to attain the requisite five GCSEs at grade C and above. And he’s recruited some pretty impressive names to teach them.

Who wouldn’t put their hand up for an anatomy lesson with Robert Winston? Or to polish up their Shakespeare with Simon Callow? Or to learn some of our island history with the formidable David Starkey?

All of which sounds like another fun, inspirational Jamie Oliver project, a chance to see how disaffected youngsters – yeah, those again – taken from their normal environments get a rare chance to shine, whilst the setbacks and personal obstacles that beset them – such as being too lazy to get off their backsides – make this the kind of TV that is guiltily compelling. And all that with a raft of celebrities (or, I should say, eminent experts in their field) thrown in and given their own set of challenges: to engage a bunch of bored, unruly teens and to make them keen to learn. Would they, like the kids, sink or swim?

It goes without saying that the kids were a handful – though it feels a bit odd to keep referring to them as kids, since at 16 and 17 they’re really young adults, and perhaps one of the problems is that we’re infantilising a whole generation and they’re merely responding to expectation. And they weren’t from just one side of the social divide – one privately educated middle-class slacker (we were told his father was an architect, though we didn’t find out what the other parents did – perhaps George was the token posh boy after all) was beginning to treat his local youth court like a home from home.

“Attention deficit disorder is not a disease,” pronounced a defiantly bilious David Starkey, albeit a little winded and deflated after his first classroom session, “it’s a description of an entire age group.” And you had to have some sympathy. These were thoughts echoed by Simon Callow, who wasn’t so combative in the classroom and so gained some of the kids’ “respect” – though not so much that they actually made an effort to listen. To him or to each other. “They’re not disciplined, in thinking or behaviour,” he said, adding, his tone somewhat incredulous, “and they’re motivated by money.” One student expressed his desire to be the next Katie Price.

Starkey must have already intuited this aspiration for money without any discernable ambition, because he’d come armed with “bling" (he used the word with relish, but that was as far as he was prepared to “get down with the kids”). In fact, the bling was part of the Staffordshire Hoard, the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver discovered to date. Two security guys were in attendance and Starkey handled the precious gold with white gloves, but the kids were unimpressed. They were also unimpressed when he proceeded to insult a boy by calling him fat. The following day he, Starkey not the boy, refused to turn up for school, and it was Starkey who was facing disciplinary action rather than any of the students.

I wouldn’t relish the prospect of being taught by the prickly Starkey, nor particularly by Alastair Campbell, though he was clearly doing his best to switch kids on to politics with footage of Martin Luther King and the Suffragettes (his conversations at home with partner Fiona Millar, a vocal advocate of the comprehensive school system must, I imagine, have been quite interesting – after all, these kids are the norm, since 50 per cent of school-leavers don’t attain anything like five GCSEs). But I did thoroughly warm to Professor Winston (pictured right), who seems to possess genuine humility and kindness and clearly has a way of engaging with people that is utterly disarming. Sadly, his dissection of a pig had students retching rather than enthralled – education, like youth, might be wasted on the young, after all.

But this slice of “real-life” proved to be troubling in other ways, too. At the end of this first episode Oliver suggested looking up more clips on YouTube. So I did. And here we could see that Starkey hadn’t been a complete washout – that comparing the writings of some ancient Nordic king with the machismo lyrics of a rapper, though perhaps a little naff, were, in fact, making a relevant point. And the kids listened. And there was clearly some listening going on in Winston’s class, too.

Obviously, programmes like this have to have some narrative tension, otherwise what’s the point of them? But it’s becoming fairly transparent how things in TV reality land really work.

• Watch Jamie's Dream School on Channel 4 OD
• Watch YouTube clips from Jamie's Dream School
• Find Jamie Oliver on Amazon

David Starkey's Guide to the Staffordshire Hoard