A Historical Framework for Understanding Public Service Media and Children’s Education in the UK: BBC School Broadcasting 1924–2008

This article explores the history of the idea that public service media has a direct role and responsibility to provide education to school-age children, through a history of the BBC’s educational service for children, known as BBC Schools. Developing from the 1920s to around 2008, BBC Schools was popular and effective, being used in almost all UK schools from the 1950s to the 1990s, making influential curriculum innovations and forming part of the UK’s education system. In providing education, the BBC was acting as a public service, in some ways comparable with the publicly funded state school system. In providing educational resources, the BBC was acting in what was traditionally a commercial market. This ambiguity was crucial to how it developed. The BBC was not mandated by the government or by its royal charter to provide education, and the government neither helped nor hindered it in doing so, despite some political enthusiasm in the 1960s. The higher echelons of the educational world never embraced the use of broadcasting in education, despite wide popularity among the grassroots of teachers. Within the BBC, the schools service was an anomaly, as its production, transmission and reception relied on the approval of schools and teachers. It was undervalued by the BBC. Technological conditions, particularly the limited adoption of audio and video recording technology, to some extent limited the use of school broadcasting. The internet and digitisation came at a time (around the year 2000) when the extension of the rights of public service media providers was politically difficult. Subsequently, BBC School Broadcasting was reduced to a fraction of its former extent. The article draws on archive sources, oral interviews and content analysis.