ITV Schools on 4

The UNM service continued to use the older version for a few months before being updated.

I'm not sure what you mean here, LWT weren't "getting away" with not making schools programmes because they were never on air when schools programmes were required. But similarly, Thames didn't do things that LWT had to do, like programmes for the God Slot, as they weren't on air on Sundays.

Most things on ITV were done by committee, and I think there was a lot of horse-trading going on, I think it was acccepted that the Big Five would do the vast majority of things but there'd be opportunities for the smaller companies. In the One Day In The Life Of Television book Granada's David Boulton talks about being part of the religion committee who would decide who'd make what for the various slots, and saying it was in many ways a ridiculous way of working, as the committee was made of representatives from all the regions, and they all had two totally incompatible aims - they were expected to choose the best programmes on merit, but as they were all representing their individual companies, they all wanted as many of their own programmes chosen as possible. He does say that a lot of it was very political and the big companies would often sit back and let a smaller company do something instead, in return for a favour later.

Obviously some of the ITV companies were bigger than others so the bigger ones would have greater obligations. The smaller companies met their licence obligations by broadcasting programmes from other regions. All ITV companies were obliged to broadcast a set amount of news, current affairs, religion and so on, but they didn't have to make it all themselves.

The “dancers” idents most other regions took had no channel branding whatsoever either before or after the logo change in 1998, though obviously promos (by then produced by the NPU) did change. Only in 1999 when the hearts idents appeared did ITV branding appear on the idents.

The pre-1989 logo never appeared on overnight services - it was just Night Time.

You can see that and the 1998 UMN overnight ident I was referring to here: https://www.tvark.org/?page=4012/

Getting back on topic, did Scotland or Northern Ireland opt out of the first programme of the day, on ITV Schools on 4, or was it just during the morning?

Depending on the region (see links), it was either opting out of the first programme, or a different programme later on.
http://www.broadcastforschools.co.uk/site/Schedule:Autumn_1988#Channel_4_Northern_Ireland
http://www.broadcastforschools.co.uk/site/Schedule:Autumn_1988#Channel_4_Scotland
http://www.broadcastforschools.co.uk/site/Schedule:Summer_1991#Other_Regions

Anglia & Meridian had it added to their existing idents some time in the summer, around July time. Of course, the Carlton star idents also had it and they appeared on Carlton, Central & Westcountry at the started of the autumn season. The official hearts appeared two months later.

Ah, the generic blue spinning hearts. The definition of design by committee.

One of the things I never got about the final versions of those was the original music on the unused versions was specific to each ident - but by the final version there were only two generic versions of the music (one with a more mellow piano intro than the other).

Central and Westcountry may have lost their names, but they did get those amazing idents. Meanwhile in Granadaland, they didn’t even bother using the full film sequences after a while.

I was more referring specifically to the “dancers” (ITV Night Time) rather than ITV generally. The dancers idents were completely unbranded (a “Night Time” logo sometimes appeared on coming up slides but never on the idents themselves) and this didn’t change until the hearts came along.

When the hearts did come along, the fully formed up ITV generic ident was used, with the spinning hearts on weekends and the smoky one at weekends. After the change to ITV1 weekends stayed the same except for the logo but on weekdays the “lines” form up was used. I never saw the films ever used overnight.

And we are possibly gone way off topic!

This is the night time ident of that era I remember, and there was a version with the old logo as well.

That's not true for the UNM overnight service, as referenced above they had a version with both the old and new logos well before the launch of the dancers.

I have seen a junction featuring a promo with the new logo and an overnight ident with the old logo, no idea how long that went on for though.

Carlton & Central also had a co-branded ITV ident, but I think that was replaced the day the new logo appeared on trails.

Interesting to see that UTV opted out of the first programme of the day on Tuesdays and Fridays in Autumn 1988. I wonder if they had a similar standby/opening roto sequence to the network, or if they just backtimed their standard roto? It’s disappointing that there seems to be no footage anywhere of UTV or Scotland opting out of ITV Schools on 4!

I remember seeing UTV’s Swings and Roundabouts when Channel 4 networked schools broadcasts on behalf of ITV in June 1987, and showed the regional opts after midday. Evidently the opt out arrangements hadn’t been finalised by then (although in practice it would have been easy enough to do, but may have required both Grampian and Scottish to opt out independently of each other).