Which is why he's decided to open a brand new private school to give the youth of today the best shot at a high quality education. Will Smith's New Village Academy is set to open in September. And it definitely isn't a Scientologist school, OK?

True, some of the teachers at Will Smith's new school might just happen to be Scientologists, but that hasn't got anything to do with anything. And, yes, the school's curriculum will be based on Scientologist instructional models developed by L Ron Hubbard himself, but that doesn't make it a Scientologist school either. However, the giant, golden rotating statue of Xenu in the playground could well make it look like a Scientologist school. Just joking!

The thing we like best about Will Smith is that he definitely isn't a Scientologist. Definitely not. It'd hurt his career to be a Scientologist, just like it hurt the career of Tom Cruise and, um, the mouthy woman out of King Of Queens, or something.

No, we like Will Smith, like we like our coffee – sceptical about notions that the human race was created because a giant alien dropped an atom bomb into volcano from a golden spaceship shaped like a jumbo jet.

You see, Will Smith definitely isn't a Scientologist. That time he defended Tom Cruise's belief in Scientology was just a display of loyalty to a friend of his who'd been bullied by the media. And that time he gave all the Hancock crew a free voucher for a Scientology personality audit was just a display of being too cheap to buy real them real gifts that they'd ever use. None of this is any suggestion that Will Smith is into Scientology.

And just because Will Smith has founded a private school where Scientologist teachers teach students a set of Scientologist values invented by Scientologist Jesus-figure L Ron Hubbard, it… wait, that does make him sound like kind of a Scientologist, doesn't it?

Of course it doesn't. We know this because Will Smith has indirectly said so himself. The Los Angeles Times reports:

[School head Jacqueline] Olivier responded to written questions about the school submitted through Will Smith's publicist. She said some staff members are Scientologists and others are Muslim, Christian or Jewish. The school has no religious affiliation, she said. "We are a secular school and just like all non-religious independent schools, faculty and staff do not promote their own religions at school or pass on the beliefs of their particular faith to children," Olivier said.  

OK, so Jacqueline Oliver has a point. Just because some of the teachers at Will Smith's new school are Scientologists, it doesn't automatically make Will Smith a Scientologist as well. That'd be like saying that because a number of girls were systematically sexually abused at Oprah Winfrey's private school, Oprah Winfrey is a child abuser. We think. That comparison might not actually hold up to too much scrutiny, so let's move on.

And besides, so what if Will Smith's new school is just a paper-thin facade to churn out a production line of fresh-faced young Scientologists? It's not really any of our business if it is. Plus, let's not forget that every new Scientologist who graduates from Will Smith's school will be expertly qualified to help anyone who's trapped in the wreckage of a horrific car crash, even more so than paramedics. Isn't that a good thing? Isn't it?

That's the case with the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy in South Africa anyway, where it turns out that instead of giving talented-yet impoverished South African girls the chance to develop the full potential that their conditions would have stopped them from reaching, she was actually inadvertently letting them get sexually abused by one of the staff. And now Oprah Winfrey has spoken to journalists about her "devastation" at discovering the scandal, promising that she'd "clean house" while introducing her new all-star teaching staff who'd make sure this would never happen again – Gary Glitter, Jonathan King, R Kelly and the creepy guy from down the road who your mum says touches women on the bus.

Oprah Winfrey didn't get to be the globe-straddling multimedia billionaire that she is now without hitting a few roadbumps along the way. But ultimately these have helped Oprah along her life's path, because there literally isn't a problem in the world that Oprah Winfrey doesn't have some down-home folksy advice for, even if that advice is increasingly "throw money at it it. Spend spend spend. I'm a billionaire, you know."

So far Oprah Winfrey's tactic has paid off – like when Oprah Winfrey heard she didn't have her own radio station, she splashed the cash and got one. Problem solved. Similarly, when Nelson Mandela told Oprah Winfrey that education standards in South Africa were less than satisfactory, Oprah vowed to pay for her own school there, one that took the raw material of the country's most talented but underprivileged girls and turned them into tiny little Oprah-clones through lessons on how to start a successful book club and how to sue people who think you'd be a good president or something.

But when the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy opened, it turned out that the end product wasn't intelligent, free-thinking modern young women but cowering sexual assault victims thanks to the alleged antics of dormitory matron Tiny Virginia Makopo, who's accused of 13 counts of assault, indecent assault and criminal injury against students aged 13 to 23.

Although Oprah Winfrey has apologised to the parents of the students, and visited the school twice in the last month to give the students her personal phone number and email address, yesterday marked the first time that Oprah had discussed the scandal publicly, to journalists via satellite from her home. And here's what she had to say:

"This has been one of the most devastating, if not the most devastating, experience of my life. As with all such experiences, there is always something to be gained, something to be learned… I am a mama bear when it comes to protecting my children. These girls are my children. That is not just rhetoric. I take their futures, and the possibility for what their futures hold, very personally."

That's a big statement from someone who once suffered the indignity of not being let into a French shop when it was closed even though she's on telly and stuff.

So now Oprah Winfrey needs to rebuild her school's reputation from the ground up. The headteacher of the academy has already been suspended, and more changes will no doubt be made as time goes on. For instance, the school's graduation pack will now include a T-shirt bearing the slogan 'Graduated From Oprah Winfrey's Leadership Academy' instead of the current 'I Studied At The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy And All I Got Was A Harrowing Indecent Assault Off A Woman With A Funny Name' which everyone has to agree is a step in the right direction.