Broadcast for Schools .co.uk
A website about schools TV and radio About this site Browse this site
Introduction
For nearly a century British TV and radio schedules were full of educational programmes meant for use in schools, but available to anyone who wanted to watch or listen to them.
This site is a guide to, and celebration of, all those schools programmes, from 1924 to 2018.
Start with one of these featured programmes, or explore below by decade, by school subject, or just by the latest updates.
Explore by decade
Explore by subject
Site news
16th October 2026: Introducing Merry-Go-Round, the BBC Schools TV topics series from the 1960s, 70s & 80s until it transformed into Zig Zag, with a complete overview, episode list, regular presenters and producers, broadcast history and theme tunes - the original 1960s version as well as the later 1970s Radiophonic wonder.
26th August 2026: A man sits down to watch TV with his children in 1976. The programme they watch and discuss would not actually be made until 1988.
Is this a plot for the science fiction series Dr Who? No, but it is how clips from that series were inserted into a 1970s schools programme that was re-edited for repeats in the 1990s.
The Odyssey was produced for Merry-Go-Round in 1976, shown a few times and then revived for Zig Zag in 1990 with detailed re-editing to change not only the TV programme the presenter views to start the whole thing off but also to re-record some of the narration practically mid-sentence and alter some of the focus of the story.
The site now has guides to both productions, including detailed notes on the edits made to one of the episodes to bring it up to date.
27th July 2026: the story, the songs and all the details of An Odd Odyssey, the 1980s musical comedy radio adaptation of Homer's Odyssey now added.
The Odyssey is all topical this year and more adaptations from schools broadcasting will be covered here soon...
Several more 2010s TV programmes not previously covered by the site have been added recently too: Who Needs Maths?, Fit to Rule, D-Day: The Last Heroes, The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England, The Modern Monarchy and Adapting Carmen
And images added to a dozen or so classic programmes which didn't previously have them.
24th June 2026: on these long, hot summer days, look back to the village of Little Twittington in the 1970s, where the committee is very busy organising the summer fête, the celebrity guest is delayed, and the old gardener is unimpressed with it all. A guide to the schools musical comedy Chaos at Crusty Towers is up now.
Also several more 2010s series not previously covered by the site have been added: Dance with the Elements, Performances from the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, The Last Days of Anne Boleyn, Regency Life: Three Lives in One Day, The Imagineers, Enlighten Up!, Rock Pool Survivors and One Hundred Years of the Women's Movement.
20th June 2026: A guide to What? Where? When? Why? with the Happy Gang, the Scottish topics series from the 1990s and 2000s - just as The Happy Gang are uploading some classic episodes to their YouTube channel!
(This was actually added back in April but I forgot to announce it at the time)
Also, this website has been running for ages, since the days that schools programmes were still being broadcast on TV & radio, but it had a brief hiatus between 2013 and 2020, so over a hundred programmes made in that time have never been covered. I've started working through that backlog. Added so far: Pompeii: The Mystery of the People Frozen in Time, Growing up Poor, Ancient Egypt - Life and Death in the Valley of the Kings, Poland Stories and Victorian Villains
Does this mean more frequent updates to the site to come? Hard to say, but I've got loads of really interesting things in the pipeline, from every single decade of the last century of schools broadcasting.
Latest updates
The Boy from Space (1980) - Episode 3: The Man in the Sand-pit  (from Look and Read)
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TV |
| 8 Nov 2026 An improved translation for one of the lines of space-speech | |
| Primary History - Episode List | TV |
| 7 Nov 2026 New page with a list of all the episodes of Primary History, from 2003 to 2005, including repeats from other series. | |
| Eureka! - Episode List | TV |
| 7 Nov 2026 New page with a list of all the episodes of Eureka!, from 1993 to 2000. | |
| Eureka! | TV |
| 6 Nov 2026 Update with some extra details, credits, and episode list. | |
| Primary History | TV |
| 28 Oct 2026 Updated with more details, presenter & producer credits. | |
| ICT 4 Learning | TV |
| 28 Oct 2026 | |
| Primary Geography - Episode List | TV |
| 26 Oct 2026 New page with a list of all the episodes of Primary Geography, from 2002 to 2007. | |
| Primary Geography | TV |
| 25 Oct 2026 Updated with outline credits and more episodes details. | |
| Landmarks
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TV |
| 23 Oct 2026 Added more images of teachers' books and DVD packs, and updated episode count to include repeats from other series | |
| Landmarks - Episode List | TV |
| 23 Oct 2026 Episode list rejigged to count episodes repeated from previous series and use s01e01 notation | |