25 years since ITV Schools ended.

I'm not sure if anybody here is / was involved in education. Video can be a powerful and eloquent educational medium although it's not always properly appreciated by teachers.

I raise my hat to the producers of BBC, ITV, and C4 schools programmes over the years. They were not just daytime TV programmes but were a national institution.

There is a strange irony that we didn't have the National Curriculum during the heydey of schools programmes and when the National Curriculum became fully implemented (it took the best part of 10 years in primary schools) then schools programmes were fading in popularity.

It would be interesting to know which of the schools programmes were the most and least popular, and whether there were any significant variations from locality to locality or amongst the demographics of schools. Many people have posted their recollections of particular schools programmes on the internet but there are many that I have watched at one time or another that barely have a mention.



The BBC still produces educational programmes and the successor of ITV schools is C4 learning that sells DVDs although prices aren't exactly cheap.

https://shop.channel4learning.com/

Though it is closing at the end of this month, so get your purchases in soon.

That reminds me of us listening to schools radio, as it was broadcast, on the old Radio 5 at primary school. With awful AM reception on the radio.

In our day we used a huge wireless set and listened on Radio 4 VHF. Time and Tune, Singing Together and a daily religious service.

At the risk of showing my age, Let's Dance and Singing Together, both recorded on an ancient Coomber radio cassette recorder.

I was at primary school 1986-1993 and while I can remember a teacher setting a recording for a radio programme (it would have been a regular radio cassette recorder and using an external wall timer I'd have thought) but I have no memory of actually listening to it. That being said i have no idea why I have a memory of seeing a teacher set this in the first place, presumably I was early into the class or something that day.

I wonder if the concept of having to physically press REC and PLAY together to record something blows the mind of people who are totally used to just having to tap a little red button on a screen?

They’d be totally freaked out by me recording the Top 40 in the early 70s by lacing up a quarter inch reel to reel, ( and then pushing Rec and Play together)

https://goo.gl/images/14Ah2x

I've read reviews on Amazon recently from people who bought wind up alarm clocks not realising they weren't battery ones and they're frustrated you have to wind them EVERY DAY as if it's the hardest task and the biggest inconvenience in the world.

The languages department at my school had some Tandberg reel to reel machines which were pretty much redundant by the time I got into the Sixth Form. Which was handy as I realised that the Jack labelled "radio" actually meant line in and so the media department was able to liberate them in time for an RSL broadcast.

They was 1997 - I must have been one of the last people to be taught how to splice edit at school. I bet Health and Safety would have a fit a kids using razor blades these days.

As much as I never managed to get a job in proper broadcast media my past as a media student 20 + years ago still comes in handy in my job in academia - screencasts and webinars with production values.

When I started secondary school in 1997 there was a cupboard full of betamax tapes, though they had no way to play them. They unded up in a slip a year or two later, I wish I'd saved them and seen what was on them (not that I would have had the space to keep them). Probably a decent amount of vintage schools presentation.

I got landed with dubbing the school's betamax collection to VHS. Pain in the arse of a job and I wish I'd kept some of the more obscure pres

If it was even half of when I digitised my VHS/Video8/Hi8 stuff a few years ago, I feel your pain!