Top Class

Top Class is a British children's television quiz show produced by ITV Studios for CBBC.[2] It began on 12 September 2016 and is hosted by Susan Calman. Each series involves sixteen teams of four Year 6/Primary 7 school children, each with a nominated teacher, answering questions mostly on the National Curriculum in a knockout format to determine "the UK's smartest school."

Top Class
Genre
Directed by
  • Tony Grech-Smith (2016-18)
  • John L Spencer (2019-)
Presented bySusan Calman
Composer(s)Craig Brown
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original language(s)English
No. of series5
No. of episodes75 (inc. 5 specials)
Production
Executive producer(s)
  • Simon Marsh[1]
  • Melissa Hardinge
  • Barry Hart
Running time30 minutes
Production company(s)ITV Studios
Release
Original networkCBBC
Picture format16:9 (1080i)
Original release12 September 2016 (2016-09-12) –
Present
External links
Website

Format

Although the competition is open to all state schools, only 16 teams per series make it through the audition stage and proceed to take part. All competitors are in Year 6 in England or Wales, and Primary 7 in Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Each round includes questions taken from the National Curriculum Key Stage 2, starting with a buzzer question. The team which answers correctly takes control of the game and is given a further four questions to answer. The subjects includes Maths, English, Science, History, Geography and News. There is also Test the Teacher, where the class' teacher answers pop-culture questions, and Pet Subjects, where the class chooses a subject to be questioned on. Pet Subjects chosen include CBBC series The Dumping Ground and the 2015 general election.

In series 3, the "Lightning" Round was introduced to start each contest; this features a puzzle, such as a word search or crossword, on two specific subjects, one for each team for a chance to score some points on the board before the subject rounds.

Each contest ends with "The Battle of the Buzzers"; teams have 90 seconds to answer as many quick-fire questions as they can on the buzzer.

Transmissions

Series
SeriesStart dateEnd dateEpisodes
112 September 201630 September 201615
225 January 20173 May 201715
33 September 201710 December 201715
429 July 20184 November 201815
529 September 201922 December 201915

Specials
DateEntitle
13 December 2016Christmas Special
7 April 2017Celebrity Special
17 December 2017Christmas Special
31 December 2017Young Celebrities Special
11 November 2018Celebrity Special
19 December 2019Christmas Special
19 December 2019Christmas Special
1 January 2020Young Ones Celebrities Special

References
  1. Prior, David (16 August 2016). "Comedian to lead CBBC's search for Britain's smartest school". Prolific North.
  2. "Top Class - Could your school be TOP CLASS?". CBBC.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.