Jamie turns up the heat to seek out teaching talent

First he took on schools, finding the country’s best dinner ladies and defeating the scourge of the Turkey Twizzler, and now top TV chef Jamie Oliver is on the lookout for Britain’s best classroom talent.

18th February 2011, 12:00am

Richard Vaughan

The Essex-born celebrity cook has launched a competition to find the most inspirational secondary school teachers in the country.

The contest will run alongside Mr Oliver’s forthcoming Channel 4 series Jamie’s Dream School, in which “inspirational” celebrities try to re- engage children who have fallen out of education.

Mr Oliver said: “I know that all over the place there are some great, inspirational teachers and I have really learned how hard teachers work just doing Dream School.”

The chef has teamed up with online giant YouTube, asking teachers to upload video clips of themselves in a bid to win a pound;10,000 grant.

YouTube has worked with exam board Edexcel, surveying thousands of teachers and pupils to come up with some tough GCSE topics.

In the videos, teachers will be asked to answer questions ranging from “Which enzymes catalyse what substrates and how do I remember them all?” to “How do globalisation and money affect local industries?”

Visitors to the website can rate the entries before they are judged by a national panel of subject specialists.

There will be one winning teacher per subject, each receiving a pound;10,000 grant. The winning teachers and a group of their students will be invited to an awards ceremony at Google’s UK headquarters.

After the competition, all entries will remain on YouTube to provide an ongoing educational resource.

YOUTUBE QUIZ - 8 BRAINBUSTERS

1. Which enzymes catalyse what substrates and how do I remember them all?

2. How do you balance a chemical equation?

3. What is Pythagoras’s theorem and where does it apply?

4. How do globalisation and money affect local industries?

5. How can I remember names and dates in history?