I don't think you should put children's lives on the telly like this. It's too much of an exposure. There is no knowing what the consequences could be. These families do not strike me as necessarily in a robust enough position to give clear consent to their children being filmed in terms of understanding they are exposing their children's privacy to be narrated for the purposes of a TV programme.
I understand that there is an argument for it. But I think it is unethical to feature these children's lives and privacy, their struggles and tears. It just feels so self evidently wrong that i cannot believe that it keeps happening.
Now it makes great telly but that doesn't make it right.
I heard that a load of good secondary schools in Liverpool told this production company No Way to filming 'Educating Merseyside' or whatever on the grounds that they did not want to offer up their kids' privacy for a load of southern Oxbridge Tristrams and Harriets to edit into narratives for the country to gape out and judge.
Some good may come of these programmes, we may learn how hard teaching is, we may learn how talented some kids/teachers are. We may learn how great it is to have a new school building when so many of us struggle in buildings that are falling down completely with no hope of a rebuild.
But exposing these children on telly ain't right.