Entertainment Education – Does it have a place in our future?

In the midst of lockdown, something quite remarkable happened. Over 1,000,000 people from the comfort of their homes and at no cost, tuned in for a PE lesson with the charismatic Joe Wicks – someone I admire deeply for his grit, resilience and energy.

For days on end, while the country was in chaos, hundreds of thousands of children and families found a new way to start their day through their televisions with a live PE lesson. In my house, I would pause from my meetings to watch my 3 and a half-year-old attempt to do squats and my 18-month-old son doing star jumps, as my wife enthusiastically got involved while giggling at the efforts of the two boys.

Joe Wicks gave structure to people’s lives for a period of time, but as I now reflect on what he actually did, I think he potentially kick-started a revolution in the form of ‘Entertainment Education’ from his living room and at no cost. I believe it has a place in education in the future.

My definition of ‘Entertainment Education’ is something done online or via TV to the masses, something entertaining and fun for students, but also hitting parts of the national curriculum. Of course, there are examples of this in the past with most media arms pumping out content, but often it’s not really entertaining, doesn’t get many students watching it and isn’t necessarily done by the most charismatic of individuals. It’s that last point, which is key, and we can’t dress it down, to be entertaining the individual leading it has to be exceptional, has to grasp the attention of the students and in my opinion, just needs countless amounts of contagious energy – something that Joe has.

The advantage that Joe had is that, he had the base to promote from, so maybe this is where we need to start. Those with not only the social media influencer and base but those who can genuinely teach and inspire – why don’t they follow suit?

I appreciate this could mean a bunch of unqualified teachers suddenly teaching, but if they were given guidance and took it really seriously rather than seeing it as just brand building, it could be quite remarkable – particularly for those extracurricular activities which will no doubt take a hit in the years ahead.

We can’t ignore the cost benefits of this to education too. For example, if we calculated the cost of doing a 30-minute face to face PE lesson for 1 million children, by my reckoning it would be:

·       1 million divided by 30 students per class.

·       33,333 PE lessons going on to students around the UK for 30 minutes.

·       If a teacher spent 30-minute preparing and 30 minutes delivering, that’s 33,330 hours.

·       Rough google, suggests ￡15.26 is the average teacher hourly wage (could be wrong).

·       It would’ve had cost the taxpayer ￡508,661 to do all of those PE lessons live.

I’m not suggesting this should replace teaching in the classroom, I’m suggesting it could compliment it and could also lower the heavy burden on teachers in the next few years ahead. If they knew 5/10 or 15 remarkable ‘Entertaining Online’ lessons were happening weekly and their students were tuning in to these, it could mean their energy could be focused on other parts of the curriculum. I mean -

Imagine if Barrack Obama did a public speaking lesson once a week?

Imagine if Jacinda Ardern did a politics lesson once a week?

Imagine if Dwayne Johnson did a drama lesson once a week?

Imagine if Cher Wang talked about entrepreneurship?

Just a thought and one to ponder on….