The pupils selected for Charles Darwin Grammar School were hardly educational failures.
They were regarded as able youngsters, with several predicted to achieve impressive GCSE results.
The experiment therefore presented them with three examinations in Biology, Chemistry and Physics.
There was a catch.
They were answering questions based upon the sort of scientific knowledge expected under the older educational system.
The results were disastrous.
Some marks were astonishingly low. Papers containing scores such as zero, one or two out of twenty produced considerable consternation amongst the teaching staff.
The girls performed badly.
The boys performed worse.
It would have been very easy to conclude that the pupils themselves were responsible. Indeed, some of the deliberately old-fashioned teachers addressed them in language that would scarcely survive in many modern staff rooms.
But that would miss an important point.
Children cannot reasonably be expected to know material they have never been taught.
The experiment was demonstrating differences between two educational systems as much as differences between two generations of pupils.
A teenager predicted an excellent GCSE science grade might nevertheless struggle with a question considered elementary under an older curriculum.
One girl, asked about human digestion, referred to the oesophagus as the “food pipe”. When pressed for the scientific term she incorrectly suggested the trachea.
The answer was wrong, certainly, but the incident illustrated something more interesting than simple ignorance.
The older educational philosophy placed enormous importance upon learning correct terminology and retaining factual information. The modern pupil might understand a general concept while lacking the precise vocabulary demanded by the older examination.
The programme then moved from examination room to laboratory.
Here the differences became even more intriguing.
The pupils encountered practical biology involving maggots and meat.
The boys generally approached the experiment enthusiastically. The girls were markedly less willing to handle the specimens.
It would be dangerous to draw sweeping conclusions from such a small television experiment, particularly about differences between boys and girls.
Nevertheless, the programme deliberately raised the question of whether single-sex teaching changed classroom behaviour.
The boys appeared delighted by practical science.
The girls appeared more comfortable in other lessons, particularly music.
The programme’s experiment was therefore beginning to produce questions rather than simple answers.
Were these differences produced by biology, upbringing, peer expectations or simply the particular personalities of the children selected?
More importantly, could four weeks of separate education make any measurable difference?
The pupils would eventually face 1950s-style O-level examinations.
For the moment, however, one conclusion seemed unavoidable.
These youngsters might have arrived believing themselves to be academically successful, but they had entered an educational world operating according to an entirely different set of rules.
