This section of the site contains term-by-term schedules of radio and TV broadcasts to schools in the UK. The following schedules are available so far:
Different colours indicate different school subjects.
English Language & Literature, Drama & Media
Modern Languages & English as a Foreign Language
Dance, Physical Education and Sport
Religious Education & Collective Worship
Music
Mathematics
Science, Nature, Technology & Engineering
Geography & Social Studies
History
Art and Crafts
Humanities, Careers & Current Affairs
Miscellany, Topics & Early Learning
| |
For Teachers
| |
1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
How to read the schedule pages
Each main schedule is presented in a grid, with individual programmes in boxes. The colour of the box shows the basic school subject covered by the programme, and the length of the box shows roughly how long the programme lasted (but beware, the grids are not completely to scale and they might get stretched out if there is a lot of text in the boxes). At the moment there is nothing to indicate the age group each programme was aimed at, so an infants or pre-school programme can't really be distinguished from a school-leavers or college programme.
The main schedule is usually the schedule for England, or specifically for London - this ensures consistency across the decades. Different programmes broadcast in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the regions of England are listed underneath, wherever they are known. These are much harder to research and I haven't always managed to find out all of the regional variations.
These schedules are only intended to give a general overview of schools broadcasts during each term. They should not be taken as a definitive source that, for example, a particular series was broadcast during every week of the term, or that it was always shown at the same time, or that a series which is not shown on the grids was definitely not broadcast during that term - it may have been on for a week or two, but not long enough to make it worth showing in the grids.
The "(rpt)" flag means that a programme is a repeat screening of a programme already shown within the same term, and normally within the same week or fortnight. There is no effort to show whether programmes were being broadcast for the first time ever, or repeated for the 8th year running (this would be a spurious distinction before the 1960s anyway, as scripts were 'repeated' but the production was new). However I will try to highlight newly-launched and noteworthy programmes in the text accompanying the schedule grids.
At the top of each page is a small gallery of publications which accompanied the schools broadcasts in that term. These should help to set the scene, especially for the very old historical schedules. They are not meant to be a representative sample of publications, they were simply chosen because I had them available to scan.
If you spot any problems with these schedules, or if you can fill in any missing information, please get in touch.
