The co-founder of Manchester-based social media marketing company is to go undercover for Channel 4 show The Secret Teacher.
The show will see Steve Bartlett, who co-founded The Social Chain with Dom McGregor in 2014, go undercover as a support worker at a Liverpool secondary school for the show, which will air on Thursday, August 22.
Bartlett will be the third of four successful Ƶ business owners that were deemed failures by the educational system to feature on the show.
The purpose is to give others the helping hand they never had, which can come in any form, such as a bursary to continue studies after school, assistance with setting up their own business, or a guaranteed job in their organisation, Channel 4 said.
Bartlett, born in Botswana but raised in Plymouth, was expelled from school, dropped out of university, got into debt and struggled to pay his rent before creating his multi-million pound company.
Speaking to the M.E.N in 2018, Bartlett said 12 A* in his GCSEs but focused on starting small businesses rather than studying.
He went to Manchester Metropolitan University before dropping out of a business management course after attending just one lecture. His mum didn’t speak to him for two years afterwards, he said.
Bartlett and McGregor founded The Social Chain in 2014, when his first business, Wallpark, a website where students could reach out to others in the same city, failed to catch fire.
The Social Chain started out with four people in a co-working space at 127 Portland Street, and have now expanded into 15,000 sq ft of office space in the building and employ over 250 people worldwide, with offices in London, New York and Berlin .
Its clients include Dreamworks, BBC, Fifa, Warner Music Group, Universal and Dreamworks.
Before offering struggling students their support, Bartlett must grapple with an education system on its knees, from rowdy classrooms for to overseeing detention and working with those students who need extra support.
Gilly Greenslade, commissioning editor for factual entertainment at Channel 4 said: “As schools face evermore extreme pressures, this series will attempt to make a positive difference in the lives of children who are falling through the cracks.
“Heart-warming and revealing in equal measure, it will ask challenging questions about whether our schools are able to provide an education fit for all.”
Last week's episode saw Merseyside self-made millionaire Kate Stewart, a single mum with no qualifications who earned her first million at the age of 23 having been expelled from school, go undercover in a school in a deprived area of Sheffield.
