This one gets a bit weird! Prof Cortex has always had a thing about brain-enhancing potion, which feels a bit like "he's smart because he takes drugs", and maybe reads a bit different in an era with a lot of energy drinks and dodgy study drugs. This focuses in on that, and it works better as a central plot device.
There's also a bit of a weird "teachers are mean because they want kids to work hard" which felt to me a bit like "what adults think children want to hear"? And a bit of a tone clash because the teachers are mean and hate play, set too much homework, and also they're planning to murder a child and harvest their brain to make intelligence-enhancing drugs. So the children don't like them because they're pushing them hard, but the story doesn't really bear out *that* being bad. And even more disjointed because the story can't get into "performance-enhancing brain-drugs are bad and we probably shouldn't aspire to give them to kids" because it's backed into a corner on the "drug-induced super-intelligence is cool and fun" front.
The part I found really pretty well done was when the teachers are expelling students - the idea of a school that treats students as a means to its own ends, being made to feel like being allowed to be there is a precarious privilege that people demand be grateful for, and feeling like it's on you to make this work. I feel like this has all the elements of a pretty strong story, but could have done with a bit more polish.
Also, I can't stress this strongly enough - if you suddenly find you're superintelligent and able to do anything, there's probably better options than "win a lot of quiz shows". I suspect you could write entire essays on what that idea says about how we understand intelligence.