Educating Yorkshire star reveals stern warning to Channel 4 over 'petrifying' concern

Educating Yorkshire is back with its second series after 11 years away from our screens as the Channel 4 documentary returns to Thornhill Community Academy in Dewsbury. However, its stars have revealed that they delivered a stern warning to the show's producers that they would only film on one condition.

The new series of Educating Yorkshire follows TCA's headmaster Mr Burton and his staff as they navigate the complex problems faced by their students in this increasingly digital era. Matthew Burton returns as headmaster after being introduced as the school's English teacher back in 2013.

However, viewers will also meet the school's new faculty - including Assistant Headteacher Melanie Delaney-Hudson, who has admitted that she signed the show's release form at the very last minute.

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"I signed consent on the week before the deadline. I was petrified," she said ahead of the show's premiere. "My gut said - I live in the local community, my children went to Thornhill Community Academy and my focus was about making sure those kids came across exactly how we know them to be."

She added that she sat down with the show's producer Kate Walker and warned them that she would only take part on one condition.

"We had a lot of open dialogue and not that I find it hard to trust anyone but if we're being completely transparent, me and Kate sat and down and I said, 'You're here to make a programme, I'm here to teach and these kids come first - and that's it. Before I know exactly where we're going with it, it's a no from me.'"

"Absolutely no, because they are more important than anything that's going on Sunday at eight o'clock."

Deputy Headteacher Zoe Ali, who also appears in the show, added: "You weren't the only one - we had lots of conversations about, 'is this the right thing to do?' You have to keep coming back to the fundamental reason why we've agreed to do it.

"We're putting ourselves out there and putting ourselves open to scrutiny and it doesn't matter how good you are at your job, there's always going to be someone somewhere who disagrees or has something negative to say.

"Suddenly you see yourself on screen and you start second guessing some of the things that you would normally do naturally - it's a really difficult process to go through and that's why the relationship with the production team was so important," she added.

"We needed to build that trust and know that you understood that we were making ourselves really vulnerable."

David Clews - creative director of Two Four, the company that make the show said that production regularly "checked in" with the teachers and students during filming.

"There's 65 cameras in the school - when we do it, we record four streams so we're not filming 65 cameras," he said.

"It is a constant dialogue that's always going on with Matt and everyone and the team about what we're filming and how we're filming."

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