The Stage

Education on the road - tutors and chaperones for children

Published Friday 27 May 2005 at 12:35 by Annie Bright

Annie Bright reveals how child actors receive their schooling from tutors while out of the classroom in rehearsals and during performance runs

As the latest Harry Potter film was nearing completion and the last batch of a hundred or so child extras said goodbye to Hogwart’s Academy at Leavesden Studios, nine talented youngsters were being put through their paces in rigorous rehearsal schedules prior to the opening of Billy Elliot - the Musical at the Victoria Palace.

Since the law on the employment of young performers was amended in 2000, there has been a burgeoning of films, television dramas and, more recently, stage shows involving children, some of them employed on a long-term basis, like the principal characters in the Harry Potter films.

Before 2000, children over the age of 12 were only allowed to work up to 80 days a year. The change in the regulations now means that children can work an unlimited number of days and from age nine they are permitted to work for up to nine and a half hours a day but not before 7am or after 7pm. The working day will include up to four hours of rehearsal or performance and three hours of schooling, plus lunch and rest breaks.

Before a production company can employ a child, a licence must be obtained from the child’s local authority and a registered chaperone will be engaged. If this takes place during the school term, a fully-qualified and experienced teacher must also be appointed. Both chaperone and tutor will have been police-checked.

As a former teacher myself, I became interested in tutoring children on film sets about eight years ago while doing walk-on work. It was agent Ray Knight who introduced me to location tutoring, having noticed my teaching qualifications on my CV. He encouraged me to set up my own consultancy service supplying tutors to the industry. I now have a growing network of experienced tutors covering all key stages in the National Curriculum and teaching all the core subjects plus languages and information technology up to GCSE level.

When I get an enquiry for a tutor, I need to know the age and any special needs of the child concerned so that I can find the best tutor for this assignment and, if time allows, I will contact the child’s school to ascertain the plan of work for the term. This enables me to pass on the information to the tutor, who can then plan his or her work accordingly to ensure continuity with the child’s regular education. This works quite well on a one-to-one basis but is obviously not practical for crowd scenes, as in Harry Potter, where tutors are usually expected to be general supply teachers for the day.

In productions where there is only one child involved, the parent very often acts as chaperone. However, in large-scale productions such as Harry Potter, where hundreds of children may descend on the studios in one day, they are organised by head of crowd-tutoring Ian Hoskin into groups of about ten, with a chaperone. Each group is allotted a tutor and a temporary classroom for the day. The principals, on the other hand, are educated separately at the studios by full-time tutors under the headship of senior tutor Janet Willis. Unlike the child extras, they will not be attending school for several months.

Schoolrooms on location can vary enormously. Tutors may find themselves working in a variety of makeshift classrooms, from spare dressing rooms at the film studios to a luxurious Winnebago on location, or even the crew’s dining bus. The nine children appearing in Billy Elliot were initially receiving their lessons in a cramped room at the Three Mills Island studios. Then, as the pressure increased towards opening night, the schoolroom was shifted to the London house where the children live under the care of the ‘House Parents’.

The nine children - three Billys, three Michaels and three Debbies - range from age nine to 14, each with different educational needs. For instance, one Billy will be sitting seven GCSEs next year and another has SATs to contend with. The children are only permitted a maximum of five performances each in any one week, so their compulsory 15 hours of schooling are re-scheduled accordingly each week by the head tutor and we liaise with each other on a regular basis as to which specialist tutors are required.

Unlike the child actors in the Harry Potter films, who are allowed to grow older with each new story, Billy Elliot and his chums must remain the same age. So as the current actors outgrow their characters in a few months’ time, new children will be brought in to understudy and eventually take on these physically demanding roles. In addition, they will still have to keep up with their education - something the adult cast members are probably glad they don’t have to do.

• For more information about tutors contact Annie Bright at locationtutorsnationwide@hotmail.com. Regarding The Children (Performances) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2000, contact the British Film Commission at www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk