The Department for Education is capitalising on the popularity of Channel 4’s Educating Essex/Yorkshire series by launching an advert using Mr Burton to recruit new teachers into the profession.

The video (scroll down to view), part of the government’s Get into Teaching campaign, features Matthew Burton from Educating Yorkshire spelling out the reasons why people should consider teaching.

It says teachers “make the CEOs, nurses, scientists and engineers” of tomorrow, as well as stating they “make young people achieve more than they could ever believe they could achieve”.

Commenting on teachers’ pay, the last line of the video states: “If you’re wondering what else they make, it’s probably more than you think.”

New teachers can typically earn between £22,000 and £27,000 a year, while the advert goes on to claim that “great” teachers can earn up to £65,000 a year.

The film shows just how powerful Channel 4’s fly-on-the-wall documentaries have become. Mr Burton’s attempts to help one of his students, Musharaf Asghar, overcome his debilitating stammer became one of last year’s most celebrated moments.

A new series of the show, Educating the East End, is currently being aired, revealing the inner workings of Frederick Bremer school in Walthamstow.

The first episode followed a Teach First teacher called Joe Bispham, who told TES that he decided to leave a career in politics to become a teacher because of Educating Essex and the staff at Passmores Academy.

“They were wonderful,” he said. “They were human, they were intelligent, they were articulate. I could see they were the kind of people I wanted to be working with. And, as they say, the rest is history.”

[View:http://www.youtube.com/v/gDvq9WfWpQY?list=UUe9Lb8w2m_9ZTGffm0ud-Hg?fs=1?fs=1?fs=1?fs=1?fs=1?fs=1?fs=1?fs=1?fs=1&rel=0]

Related stories:

TES’ full coverage of Educating the East End 

‘Don’t be scared. It has to go terribly to hurt your school’ - August 2014