25 years since ITV Schools ended.

I think 1996 look with people pointing and looking confused has to the the worse look of the lot. It's like Harry Enfield sketch.

I take it the 40 sec clock was only used at certain times during 1993?

Assuming you mean the ITV Schools one? It was used from January to June 1993 for the first junction only. It was introduced when the interval at 9.25am was abolished and Channel 4 could sell advertising just before Schools. A clip from YouTube shows that S4C just started Schools programmes with a normal junction from this period.

You mean this one:


If so they're not really pointing, more carrying and pressing (and I don't get the Harry Enfield reference? )

Their last schools package was and still is great:

and both better than the 1993-1996 weird music era.

Sorry to be hugely pedantic, that that wasn't the final package for C4 Schools. After the rename to 4Learning in 2001, this package followed in September 2001:



Then there was a further package in September 2004, but everybody's forgotten that one as it was very much once 4Learning was being wound down.

What I always noticed in that one is the kid who takes off the gas mask looks JUST like my cousin's oldest son (or what he looked like back in 1999 anyway). To the point I almost wondered back then if it was him, but I'm sure I'd have heard about it if he ended up on a Channel 4 ident.

And it didn't have a clock, so nobody cared.

Billie Piper didn't shout from the rooftops that she'd been in a Channel 4 ident either. Mind you she'd also appeared on Scratchy & Co for something or another, though hiding that is probably par for the course.

You're not unique though in thinking you went to school with somebody off the TV. I went to school with somebody who was the absolute spitting image of Elliott in the film E.T.. Despite the fact it was 1997 and the film was released in 1982...

Though to be fair she's had a lot more in her career to shout about than having to care about a Channel 4 idents and Scratchy & Co. Whereas he works in an office in a branch of Five Guys, and before that over a decade at KFC, so I think a Channel 4 ident is showbiz in comparison if he actually had appeared in one

Am I the only one then who quite likes the 1993-96 era? Mostly for the nostalgia factor (I have no memory of the 1987-93 look despite remembering some of the programmes) and how much they creeped me out - the actual 4 Schools idents featuring flickering historical figures were extremely unsettling to me as a kid, along with the countdown music.

You may be in a minority here, but I understand what you mean about the nostalgia factor and 1993-96 being the first Schools presentation you remember.

I’m quite possibly in a similar minority because the 1987-93 pres, although impressive, is not as iconic to me as the 1976-87 ITV era, for the same reason - it’s the first schools pres I remember seeing. Also, the music changed each term, and the illustration slide changed each week - so there was the excitement and anticipation of a new slide each Monday morning and, usually, new music each term. Save for a couple of minor tweaks, the 1987-93 package didn’t change at all in six years so any such anticipation was gone completely.

I can't remember as much about the 1993-96 era, as we were mostly watching off VHS then, and the teachers usually fast forwarded through all that to the programme itself. I do remember being gutted when the ITV Schools animations were replaced with the Channel 4 ones though.

I do remember there was a poster on the wall in the TV room that had the schedule for that year's BBC/ITV/4Schools programmes for that year. Some thing I wish I'd kept. I had a 1997/98 school year BBC one at one time that I got from my secondary school, but unless it's in one of the boxes in the loft, I don't have it any more.

In my case the ITV Schools ident is the first one I remember seeing, as I started school in 1991. Nothing to remember about BBC School pres of course as they'd just been using standard BBC2 presentation for schools shows for years before then. I remember several of the programmes though (though I can't remember all of their names! And I remember us watching more BBC than ITV/4 Schools shows). Interesting that BBC ditched distinctive schools pres back in the 80s, but ITV/Channel 4 managed to hang onto it into the 00s.