Education documentary shines light on learning challenges

He's a producer, writer, director.

He calls Lake Macquarie home, but hunts for deals at places like the Cannes Film Market and the American Film Market. Levy looks for distributors, finance, networks, collaborators - whatever it takes to get a project funded and delivered to an audience.

Right now, Levy, who runs Resonant Blue Studios, is pitching for deals on half a dozen feature movie concepts, two TV series and a documentary series. One of his strongest projects on the drawing board is Catch-Up Kids, a documentary series that explores the stories of children, parents and teachers who could not thrive, or even survive, in the education system until something changed.

Levy lays it out: "It's about children, and their families and their teachers, going from kids who self identify as, say, 'left behind'. So they are the sort of kids who the education system doesn't necessarily fit so well, or maybe have some learning challenges like ADHD or maybe some focus issues, or maybe mental health challenges, and the sort of kids who aren't doing well at school, aren't fitting the social scene - aren't, you know, on that main stage.

"And every education system in the whole world is challenged by the same problem, which is, if you're one teacher with 30 kids, how do you give individual attention to all 30? And the answer is, it's not possible."

Levy's plan for the series involves a cast of experts, children and their stories, parents and how they've been affected, how they reframe how they see their children and find their potential, and then a celebrity aspect of people telling their stories.

Levy expects to begin filming the first interviews before the end of the year and shoot enough footage to complete a pilot show that he can take to the marketplace for additional funding.

Among the experts Levy says are committed to interviews for Catch-Up Kids is Dr Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist who is chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University. She was involved in The Social Dilemma, a major documentary where tech experts flagged the dangerous impact of social networking. She's also the author of the best-selling book Dopamine Nation.

Another person on board is David Gillespie, an Australian lawyer and author whose books include Brain Reset, which suggests that addictive activities, such as screen use, sugar consumption and drinking, spike human dopamine levels and affect the brain's ability to regulate mood.

"This is not about reflecting badly on anyone - everyone is trying to do their absolute best," Levy says. "Teachers are well-intentioned... but you can't always figure out what is going on with every kid. If a child is rescued, changing that trajectory is what makes this meaningful to me."

Levy plans on using animation for part of the series, to soften the harsh reenactments of some of the interactions between teachers and students that contribute to the students' classroom failure.

"We thought animation was a way of communicating that emotional story, but softening it a little bit to make it more accessible, but also more watchable by children" he says. "So while I envisage children will watch this as a documentary series, and parents with young kids, I'd love to have an animated element to bring children so they could look at it and go, 'Oh, that's me, that's a teacher at my school, that's how I am'. Maybe there is something that can be done. That's the outcome we are hoping for."

Levy's idea for the Catch-Up Kids doco series was inspired by Storm McGrath, CEO of Kip McGrath Education Centres, a Newcastle-based supplementary education provider that has more than 550 tutoring centres in 20 countries around the world that offer small group tuition to students in English and maths.

The seed was planted when Levy heard McGrath give an impassioned speech.

"I was doing a speech on my growth as a manager or CEO in front of 150 people, McGrath says. "It wasn't easy to do, the story is sometimes not easy to tell. And Tim [Levy] approached me, and I said I don't want the story to be about me, it's more about the good we've done, and concentrate on the stories about the kids and the journeys."

McGrath is listed as executive producer of Catch-Up Kids and acknowledges Kip McGrath Education is providing funds for it.

"The company itself is funding it, to get the initial stages [done]," McGrath says. "What happens after that, I don't know. Honestly, if it makes money or doesn't make money is irrelevant. The story and the kids and making people aware there are places to go to get help is more important."

With an entire career dealing in students who need more attention to "catch up" academically, McGrath knows the challenges and obstacles that abound.

"We definitely don't want to make it all about us," he says of the documentary series. "It's all about the children and their journey. Talking about, hopefully, getting someone who cares saying there is a hearing issue here, or there's an eye issue here, or I think there's dyspraxia, dyslexia, whatever these things will be. Talking to someone who sees these kids more than most people do so they can refer them to the right people."

A report issued this year by the Grattan Institute, Tackling under-achievement: Why Australia should embed high-quality small-group tuition in schools, makes a persuasive case that Australian students are falling behind and suggests the "small-group tuition" model should be explored to get those students back on track.

The report says, based on the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment, about two in five Australian students do not meet the Australian national proficiency standard in reading and maths by the time they are 15.

"We think everyone has a story about how education has let them down at some stage," McGrath says. "The family, someone in family, has a story to tell. We just want to tell these stories about that, and there is hope, there is help. Life is so complex now we need to do more."

Levy is adamant the series is not about what Kip McGrath Education Centres does.

"This is not KME story," he says. "This a collaboration. This is a story about children, their parents, their teachers, about how to take a child who is feeling lost, or left behind or left out and bringing their to the their strongest potential. That is what this is about."

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