| Genre: | Entertainment Documentary Reality television |
| Creator: | BBC |
| Director: | Cher Adamson Chris Chapman Matt Grosch Jamie McLeish |
| Voices: | Jonathan Thoburn (Series 1 & 2017 Special, 2018 Special, 2019 Special) Trevor Evans (Series 2 & 2017 Special, 2018 Special, 2019 Special) Martin Jones (Series 3 & 2018 Special) Ben Shore (2019 Special) Ewan Nicoll (Series 4 & 2019 Special) Shirley Ballas (Our School Summer Camp) Helena Worth (Series 5 & Series 6) Brandon Swain (Series 6) Lily Kerbey (Series 7) Diane Morgan (Series 8) |
| Theme Music Composer: | Sam Gale |
| Opentheme: | "Our School" |
| Endtheme: | "Our School" |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Executive Producer: | Kez Margrie Richard Marson |
| Producer: | Vanessa Singh Natasha Cox Matt Grosch Cher Adamson Chris Chapman Jamie McLeish |
| Location: | Conyers School, Stockton-on-Tees (Series 1) Greenwood Academy, Birmingham (Series 2) Firth Park Academy, Sheffield (Series 3) Shawlands Academy, Glasgow (Series 4) Hawthorn High School, Pontypridd (Series 5) Ryburn Valley High School, Calderdale (Series 6) Firth Park Academy, Sheffield (Series 7) Badminton School, Bristol (Series 8) |
| Editor: | Various |
| Camera: | Multi camera Dual cameras |
| Runtime: | 22 - 30 minutes |
| Company: | Twofour |
| Network: | CBBC (2014–2022) |
| Num Series: | 7 |
Our School is a British documentary reality television programme on CBBC which first aired on 3 September 2014 and has run for eight series. It uses a fly-on-the-wall format to show the everyday lives of the staff and pupils in secondary schools and follows children as they move from Year 6 into Year 7. From series 5 onwards, the series featured pupils in both Year 7 and Year 8.
In 2019, a spin-off called Our School Summer Camp was made, featuring students from series 1, 2 and 3, and some new students, joined by headteacher Shirley Ballas.
| Series | Episodes | Originally aired | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First aired | Last aired | |||
| 1 | 16 | |||
| 2 | 15 | |||
| 3 | 15 | |||
| 4 | 20 | |||
| 5 | 20 | |||
| 6 | 22 | |||
| 7 | 20 | |||
| 8 | 20 | |||
Our School was commissioned in September 2013 by the production company TwoFour and CBBC (the children's television brand owned by the BBC and primarily aimed at children aged between the ages of 7 and 16). Each series of programmes follows the day-to-day school life of 11-year-olds as they transition from different primary schools to embark on their first year at a secondary school and the commencement of their Key Stage 3 education. The programme uses a fly-on-the-wall camera approach to record the trials and tribulations, the joys and the sorrows, and the successes and surprises, of eleven Year 7 pupils throughout the whole academic year. Each series is filmed in a different school.
Our School was publicly announced in early 2014. The series follows the same overall format as Educating..., another documentary reality television programme on Channel 4 from the same production company which was first broadcast in September 2011 and which also uses fly-on-the-wall cameras.
Our School has run for eight series on CBBC and BBC iPlayer to date, with each series having between 15 and 20 episodes, and with each episode focusing on a particular event, group of students or storyline. In addition, there have been multiple specials in which students and schools from previous series are revisited.
The first series was filmed at Conyers School in the town of Yarm near Middlesbrough. It showed the Year 7 classes experiencing secondary school for the first time and featured some of the challenges they may face in later life.
The first series was made up of 15x30 minute episodes and began to be broadcast on 3 September 2014. The final episode of the series was aired on 10 December 2014.
In 2015, it was announced that a special episode would be added to the first series. This aired on 7 September 2015 and was a catch-up episode that saw the cameras return to see what had happened to the Year 7 pupils, who were now in Year 8.
The second series of Our School was filmed at Greenwood Academy in Castle Vale near Birmingham.
This series began to be aired on 5 January 2016 and ran for 15 weeks, with the final episode being broadcast on 12 April 2016. It was retitled Our School 2 and followed the same format as Series 1.[1]
Before the launch of the third series there was one-off special, which saw two students, one from Series 1 and one from Series 2, swap schools for a day and get to know and interact with the other students. The special aired in August 2017.
The first episode of Series 3 of Our School was broadcast on 5 September 2017.[2] It was filmed at Firth Park Academy in the Shiregreen area of Sheffield.[3]
Special: When Conyers Met Greenwood
The fourth series was filmed in Scotland, at Shawlands Academy in the Shawlands area of Glasgow.
SPECIALS:
The fifth series was filmed in south Wales, at Hawthorn High School (Ysgol Uwchradd Y Hawthorn) in the village of Hawthorn, Rhondda Cynon Taf near Pontypridd. In a new feature, for the first time year 8 pupils were also featured alongside the year 7 pupils in the show.
| 1 | A Brand New Term | 3 September 2019 |
| 2 | A Class Full of Chickens | 10 September 2019 |
| 3 | When School Sucked | 17 September 2019 |
| 4 | Here Comes Trouble | 24 September 2019 |
| 5 | Plastic Not Fantastic | 1 October 2019 |
| 6 | Lessons in Gunge | 8 October 2019 |
| 7 | A Slice of Pizza | 15 October 2019 |
| 8 | Face Your Fears | 22 October 2019 |
| 9 | Partners in Crime | 29 October 2019 |
| 10 | Our Scary Movie | 29 October 2019 (iPlayer Exclusive) |
| 11 | Teaching Me Tidy | 5 November 2019 |
| 12 | Leap of Faith | 5 November 2019 (iPlayer Exclusive) |
| 13 | Vote for Me | 12 November 2019 |
| 14 | Can't Play Will Play! | 12 November 2019 (iPlayer Exclusive) |
| 15 | And Then They Were Eight | 19 November 2019 |
| 16 | Would You Eat Frogs Legs | 19 November 2019 (iPlayer Exclusive) |
| 17 | Keep Calm and Carry On | 26 November 2019 |
| 18 | The Magic of Christmas | 3 December 2019 |
| 19 | Get Your Act Together | 10 December 2019 |
| 20 | Our School Rocks | 10 December 2019 (iPlayer Exclusive) |
| 21 | SPECIAL: How We've Changed | September 2019 |
| 22 | SPECIAL: Taking The Boys Out Of Sheffield | September 2019 |
Series 6 was filmed at Ryburn Valley High School in the town of Sowerby Bridge in the Upper Calder Valley of West Yorkshire. The first episode was broadcast on 26 August 2020.
| Lockdown Special 1 | Lockdown: 1 | iPlayer Exclusive |
| Lockdown Special 2 | Lockdown: 2 | iPlayer Exclusive |
| 1 | Every Dream Counts | 26 August 2020 |
| 2 | The Power Of Yet | 2 September 2020 |
| 3 | Twinfinity And Beyond | 9 September 2020 |
| 4 | Don't Touch My Crocodile | 16 September 2020 |
| 5 | The Appliance of Science | iPlayer Exclusive |
| 6 | Teacher's Pet | 23 September 2020 |
| 7 | Where There's a Wheel | 30 September 2020 |
| 8 | Operation Prank | iPlayer Exclusive |
| 9 | Trick Or Teach | iPlayer Exclusive |
| 10 | Anything I Can Do We Can Do Better | 7 October 2020 |
| 11 | Change the World with Kindness | 14 October 2020 |
| 12 | Age Is Just A Number | iPlayer Exclusive |
| 13 | I'm With the Band | 21 October 2020 |
| 14 | The Forgotten Room | 28 October 2020 |
| 15 | Think Before You Sink | iPlayer Exclusive |
| 16 | Set Your Fear on Fire | 4 November 2020 |
| 17 | If At First You Don't Succeed | iPlayer Exclusive |
| 18 | The Seeds of Change | 11 November 2020 |
| 19 | Less Chat More Action | iPlayer Exclusive |
| 20 | The Christmas Express | 18 November 2020 |
| 21 | The Show Must Go On | 25 November 2020 |
| 22 | One Last Dance | 2 December 2020 |
Series 7, filmed at Firth Park Academy, started broadcasting on CBBC on 6 September 2021. The series consists of 20 episodes aired over selected weeks of the Autumn and Spring terms of the current academic year as part of the Bitesize programming block. The first ten episodes aired during the first two weeks of the school year before taking a break. The series resumed with the remaining ten episodes from 17 January 2022. The episodes were made available on iPlayer as well.
| 1 | Bin Those Fears | 6 September 2021 | |
| 2 | That’ll Teach Them | 7 September 2021 | |
| 3 | The Pet Test | 8 September 2021 | |
| 4 | The Rabbit Whisperer | 9 September 2021 | |
| 5 | Mind Games | 10 September 2021 | |
| 6 | Viva Espana! | 13 September 2021 | |
| 7 | There's No Planet B | 14 September 2021 | |
| 8 | Takeover Day | 15 September 2021 | |
| 9 | Grow Your Own Library | 16 September 2021 | |
| 10 | From Ramadan to Eid | 17 September 2021 | |
| 11 | You Snooze You Lose | 17 January 2022 | |
| 12 | Puppy Love | 18 January 2022 | |
| 13 | Growing Pains | 19 January 2022 | |
| 14 | This Little Piggy | 20 January 2022 | |
| 15 | How to Be a Winner | 21 January 2022 | |
| 16 | King Tim and the Big Art Scam | 24 January 2022 | |
| 17 | Cool to Be Kind | 25 January 2022 | |
| 18 | You're Hired | 26 January 2022 | |
| 19 | Just Be Fierce | 27 January 2022 | |
| 20 | Brave The Stage | 28 January 2022 |
Series 8 was filmed at Badminton School, an independent boarding and day school for girls in Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol. The series was scheduled to start on 12 September 2022 but was delayed to a later date due to the death of Elizabeth II. As such, the BBC iPlayer synopsis for the episode "Pen Pals" has a notice saying that it was filmed in 2021 before her death, as she is mentioned in the present tense once. The series is narrated by Diane Morgan.
| 1 | Away from Home | 26 September 2022 | |
| 2 | Around the House | 27 September 2022 | |
| 3 | Year of the Tiger | 28 September 2022 | |
| 4 | Watch This Space | 29 September 2022 | |
| 5 | Braving the Storm | 30 September 2022 | |
| 6 | All About Emily | 3 October 2022 | |
| 7 | Join the Club | 4 October 2022 | |
| 8 | All the Feels | 5 October 2022 | |
| 9 | School of Rock | 6 October 2022 | |
| 10 | Pen Pals | 7 October 2022 | |
| 11 | New to the Nest | 10 October 2022 | |
| 12 | Can You Cook It? | 11 October 2022 | |
| 13 | House Wars | 12 October 2022 | |
| 14 | What's On Your Mind? | 13 October 2022 | |
| 15 | How it Started/How it's Going | 14 October 2022 | |
| 16 | Take the Plunge | 17 October 2022 | |
| 17 | The Staff of Destiny | 18 October 2022 | |
| 18 | How to Get a Head | 19 October 2022 | |
| 19 | Prom Planners | 20 October 2022 | |
| 20 | School, Good Vibes Only | 21 October 2022 |