Schools TV: Leave Us Kids Alone, or School Uniform

[@colinr0380]

I have always liked that the "school days are the best years of your life" can be read both happily as halcyon days of promise, and darkly for no matter how bad the school days are things are only going to get worse from here!

[@DeltaC79]

Taxes, more responsibility, whatever the heck money is, & that other thing I forgot

[@ironiceire]

Maybe that's why there's so much content that takes place there. Either playing into the trauma like Fairly OddParents (the original Timmy Turner version) or something like Azumanga Diaoh, Lucky Star or Nichijou

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

My Mum co-founded a small indie company that worked on educational stuff for schools in the eighties. It was called Curriculum Video, and they were distributed all over Wales. Considering they were all made by my Mum and ten or so Aberystwyth University mates of hers, they came out bloody well! Also, some of the '80s/'90s educational television science stuff was still being shown to us at secondary school in the early 2010s, where they'd wheel out a CRT that was older than most of the class and show us a then thirty, now forty, year old program on a battered VHS.

[@d2dar459]

It was still the same in the 90s secondary schools, our outdated VHS videos shown a hairy guy in thick framed glasses and bell bottoms droning on about photosynthesis.

[@jamespoole76]

That ITV schools music brings back so many memories great times. Thanks I really enjoyed watching this video.

[@whatamalike]

Wonderful as usual. I do wish post breakfast morning hours were dedicated to schools programmes again rather than Karen tv

[@d2dar459]

"Karen TV" 😂

[@whatamalike]

@d2dar459 basically what daytime TV now lmao. Either an antique obsessives wet dream or the complaints department of b&q Utter monoculture. Absolutely despise it.

[@IceniSky]

It really is 'Karen TV' now.

[@simarriott524]

Omg I’m overcome with nostalgia and memories of school room with a black and white monitor.

[@KEITHMU]

What a lovely video, thanks for taking the time to produce it. Does anyone remember the special Ceefax pages that were also shown during very long intervals on BBC Two from 1983 - 1989?

[@brucedanton3669]

Yes I do too but I am sure they were only on between 1983 to 1986 from what I have read before though too of course?

[@bradmiley]

I'm only a few minutes in, and this is a real trip down memory lane. In our region, nobody could agree on the half-term week, so while we were off school and not poorly, we watched loads of Schools Programmes. I recall "B.A.R.T" got extensive play when I was a wee 10 year old laddie. My then biological brother absolutely adored the Tom Fogerty track. It was SOOOO powerful, and we would wait, with a cable connecting the TV to a tape recorder so we could air guitar whenever we liked. Thank you for telling me the name - it really takes me back... into the anals of my early schooldays - yes, that's the correct spelling, as they smelled a bit. Well, some of the kids did... Keep making these marvelous videos my friend!! 🎉🎉🎉❤

[@TYTDReviews]

ITV and Channel 4 schools were where a lot of my own personal memories lie, particularly the early 90s channel for 'blue screen void' aesthetic. A lot of that period of classroom TV had an influence on my own channels aesthetic and even now I'll regularly sit for a few hours with old 'schools' programming on in the background. It was such a fever inducing and odd experience. Even the latter day elements of 'The learning zone' on the BBC had an heir of 'this shouldn't be being broadcast right now'about it... Anyway! Fantastic video! You've really outdone yourself man, this was brilliant!

[@Stephie2007]

I live in the USA and the closest thing we have to educational television is PBS and most of what can be considered "School friendly" are kids shows. However PBS' documentary programs and information shows (how to shows like the cooking shows or travel shows) could be used in a college setting depending on the course material. However almost none of these programs have corresponding learning material for a classroom setting.

[@TServo2049]

Instructional television was even closer. This was a subset of educational TV, also shown on public TV stations. They were usually 15 minutes instead of 30, and much more focused on the kind of direct classroom style teaching that UK schools programs were. I’m not sure if instructional TV I’d a thing anymore. The biggest provider/aggregator of such shows, the Agency for Instructional Technology, went out of business in 2015.

[@imrustyokay]

Those old nature photos and paintings remind me of stuff you'd see on places like Tele-Quebec or YLE in Finland or a Regional Public Television Station or Network in a Rural US State like North Dakota or Nebraska. I actually quite like it, it's simple, and while it isn't very interesting, it's still better than just a blank slide.

[@laurenceodell2718]

Oooohh! Starting off this video with BART, eh?

[@steviegTVreturns]

Great video Matthew. All I would add is that ITV wanted Schools programmes away from ITV (along with horse racing) as early as 1984. When the proposals were put to the IBA, they were told no and Schools couldn’t be moved until Channel 4’s coverage was nearer to 100%. Obviously the daytime ground was empty between 83 and 86 for the most part on BBC1, but I wonder whether the IBA relented more so in 1987 because the BBC now provided actual competition.

[@brucedanton3669]

It could well have been by then of course indeed so too I wonder?

[@andrewswift9039]

Weekday horse racing coverage went to Channel 4 in March 1984

[@brucedanton3669]

@@andrewswift9039 Yes it did there then of course so too as well.

[@stuartkenny7430]

Now ITV have the horse racing back.

[@edwardburek1717]

Meticulously researched and produced video there. Like all kids of the 70's and 80's forced to sit bolt rigid on bone-hard wooden chairs while some relief teacher tried to figure out what the "PLAY" button on the video player actually did, I too remember those halcyon days of Schools TV. The identa were very, very memorable, although my mates and I tended to refer to the BBC Dots ident as The Shooting Gallery. As for the ITV Schools on Channel 4 package, the CGI generated idents were rather brilliant for their time. Until now, I had never known that The Journey and Just A Minute were composed by the same person that gave us Holy Mackerel and Chasedown Sunnyside, albeit under a pseudonym. And it was absolutely joyful to see once again the work of the legendary Dave Jeffrey - truly, a wizard of Flash. All in all, it made me so nostalgic, I wanted to contract flu and get my only source of sustainance from an IV feed of Lucozade. Kids today - they don't know when they're born.

[@liamh1982]

I'm guessing that S4C Ysgolion couldn't use the ITV Schools logo because at least some of the Welsh language programmes would have been provided by the BBC.

[@arthurvasey]

Before programming from proper Channel 4, they just were identical to Channel 4 - using the Roto thing and the clock, with ITV Schools before it - but before S4C opt-outs, it would say S4C Schools before English language programming and S4C Ysgolion before Welsh ones!

[@lewisclark1122]

That ITV Schools theme tune was our generation's 'Ode To Joy'

[@MarkPentler]

A lovely surprise for my bus ride home from work Will have c4 schools theme in my head all day... edit: that TWO countdown is the timer that Tom Scott was after, the BBC micro one. They seem to have used it everywhere!

[@christopherwilliams2093]

I believe it was first used on BBC1's Double Dare which was a segment within Going Live! I have often wondered how the clock found its way into the BBC2 Continuity suite!!!!

[@ExpoAviation]

Argh bloody Wordy! Another excellent video Matthew, I must say that as much as I love the ITV Schools on Channel 4 logo and music I would have loved that S4C dragon clock instead :) Incidentally ITVSoC4 did use three other pieces of music though as far as I can remember these were only used at the start of the morning once Channel 4 had got its own breakfast programme, it was messing the timings up or something. They were stock pieces, the only one I can remember the name of was called "Ticket to Freedom" and had been used on an LWT promo several years earlier. Anyway, keep up the good work!

[@BobtheFishProductions]

Yeah, those don't count, they were just filling time waiting for TV-am to close down.

[@j0hnf_uk]

My experience of Schools programmes was generally during half-term. Rather than show, 'holiday', programmes for the week, they repeated the week before's Schools programmes, due to the fact that some areas in the UK had a different week off than others did, so the BBC and ITV would just show the same shows again. The only problem with watching it, though, was that it was always the same programmes, (or at least, the same theme of programme), that they showed. The most memorable half-term being the one at the end of October, that had some programmes concentrate on Halloween. Words And Pictures on the BBC, for instance, had the same song and stop-motion segment for most of my educational years, albeit with a different presenter as the years rolled on, about witches going, 'ooooooh', or something. You could almost quote it, verbatim, from the years before. The other 2 half-terms weren't anywhere near as memorable as they didn't coincide with any event in particular. Not even a hint of Shrove Tuesday in the mid February one, and the one at the end of May, (if I remember correctly), had no significance at all. Although, to be honest, I wouldn't have spent a lot of time watching TV during that particular half-term, with the weather outside being far more clement than February or October. As for watching Schools programmes at school; it's not something I remember us doing very often at all. I think, 'Near and Far', was about the only show I remember watching certain episodes of, (one about tin mining, springs to mind), but other than that, we didn't get to see anything much. The only other occasion I remember was due to the general election in '79, when the school I attended was used as a polling station, meaning all us kids got the day off! I took the opportunity to not only watch some of the Schools programmes, but actually record the theme tunes and the music played inbetween onto audio cassette via a mono recorder placed next to the speaker of the TV. The resultant tape I still have to this day. It was a perfect opportunity for me to do this, as none of my older siblings were present, so they wouldn't go out of their way to make noises deliberately to ruin any recordings I did. They didn't share the same enthusiasm as me about archiving television audio. For the record, I never received Lucozade as a result of being sick off school. In fact, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I was off sick from school during my entire 12 years of compulsory education. More's the pity. I remember annoyingly contracting chicken pox right at the start of the Easter holidays, one year. How fortunate that the incubation period and the school holidays were both 2 weeks! I was thrilled, I can tell you(!)

[@ashfaq1999]

Great video. Remember these as a school kid.

[@jonkasonic]

Love your videos. My school had one of those wood effect TVs in what they called "The library" which was pretty much where they put the tatty kids books - specifically watching the Rotating itv logo on channel 4

[@arthurvasey]

My junior school had a library, which the telly was in - a crappy black and white thing - the classes would all file in to watch programmes with generic titles like Watch, Look & Read, Words & Pictures, Merry-Go-Round, Music Time and Finding Out - which, reading it as I have typed it, makes it look like one programme with an unwieldy title! Other programmes from radio included Time & Tune - they fetched a speaker in for that, A Service For Primary Schools, which we listened to in the hall and a programme on tape called Musical Movement & Mime, presented by one James Dodding! Later on, we moved schools - the Service For Primary Schools, which went out on Thursdays, was relocated to a classroom and the telly was transported from classroom to classroom! The idea of putting a telly in each classroom and connecting it to the main aerial never occurred to the school - route marching us to the TV room was perfectly acceptable or transferring the telly and having to keep tweaking the aerial to make sure we weren’t watching snow and ghosts, seemed OK!

[@MarkPentler]

30:25 very nice work you hoopy frood

[@SuperGingerBickies]

The Boy From Space on BBC Schools, huge TVs wheeled into the school hall on cabinets, record players in wooden cabinets and one speaker and ... videos with giant, colour-coded chunky metal press-down buttons ... and teachers who wasted time faffing about on them whilst we sat cross-legged on the floor. I love learning but hated school.

[@spews1973]

Who else used to pretend to shoot the dots as they disappeared from the blue and white clocks?

[@andrewswift9039]

9:42 The BBC Pie Chart had a piece of music by Leonard Salzedo called Guadalajara to accompany it. If the Schools Diamond was introduced in 1973 then it was probably from the start of the 1973/74 school year

[@MakerfieldConsort]

I'm sure you know this, but for those who might not, Leonard Salzedo also wrote a Divertimento whose first bars would become the Open University fanfare.

[@philipbranco9568]

One thing you missed Matthew, was short lived Teachers TV which much of 4Learning's remit was pushed to was launched in 2005 and later closed down by then Education Secretary Ed Balls in 2011. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teachers_TV

[@LouerTube]

I'm 22 and I have a vivid memory of watching an old tape of a channel four schools programme using the weird alien countdown in the corner in around about 2007. It was an episode about old toys and I remember distinctly the TA saying something to the teacher to the effect of 'even the new toys in this are probably old ones now'. Very hyper-specific but distinct memory from childhood that suspect these idents tend to unlock for generations typically older than my own.

[@RaiderRich2001]

We had network afterschool specials and "Cable in the Classroom" here in the States, would be interesting to see how the programs compare.

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

These were like the PBS "Instructional Programming" blocks that used to be seen during school hours in the last century. Those of my generation would remember watching these 15 minute programs during the 70's to the 90's of all sorts of subjects. This practice ended with the start of the "PBS Kids" block.

[@brucedanton3669]

Thank you for this of course, most interesting and well researched it is too. Well done!

[@Sheffield_Steve]

Really enjoyed watching this. I totally agree with you about the "best years of your life" B.S. school was a horrid time, still feeling the effects of the bullying into my mid 40's, finding it difficult to talk to ppl and takes weeks, maybe months before I might begin to talk to them, let alone trust that they're friendly! Not to forget years of anti-depressants and useless counseling. But I digress as I wanted to talk about the TV equipment that our primary school used to have. It was a massive wooden cabinet with a red light on the cabinet as though that powered it. I think the TV was called Monitor Receiver or something like that and either featured a Baird VCR or a commercially available JVC VHS machine that featured the coloured shaped buttons to represent Play, FF, etc. The audio department of my primary school was cooler and had some great equipment, Smith & something or other record players in the wooden carry cases, various tape recorders and radio cassette recorders and the cherry on the cake, they had one or two of the cool Sharp GF-5454 stereo radio cassette recorders! 😀👍

[@edbateyjr.517]

Lovely!

[@glassowlie]

32:08 Is that the promo I archived? Nice!

[@SAMwise-ps6zo]

one of the things we had in reception class (in 1990 for me) was a programme called "something to think about' broadcast on the original radio 5

[@j0hnf_uk]

The BBC did do a lot of Schools programmes on radio, as I recall. In fact, I think I remember listening to more schools programmes on audio than actually watching them. I know Geoffrey Wheeler presented one of them, but I can't remember the name of what it was about. I think they later did the same thing they did with TV programmes, in broadcasting them in blocks, over-night, as I once inadvertently tuned into Radio 4 one night after it, 'closed down', only to hear a Schools music programme. It took me back a little bit to my earlier days of listening to such shows. I think that was in late 1991.

[@sporkfindus4777]

I remember being confused by the spinning ITV logo with the channel 4 logo, and being troubled by how the I and V didn't fit together properly. Watch how the magic pencil writes it. I'd love to know the make of television that was wheeled into the hall at our primary school. It had a huge cartridge slider volume control with the channel selector on top of it.

[@tvschools7860]

Love the video but I'm going to have to correct to on an inaccuracy. The 'Clockwork dragon' was last used on Friday 4/2/2000. I know because I recorded it. The 'tiled carousel' started on Monday 7/02/2000. Not 1999.

[@bradmiley]

Wow! I'd forgotten about The Diamond! That takes me back to my first years at First School. I hated the 1977 change. It was... wrong. I preferred the Brainwashing. ... Sit still... No talking....

[@puddock6336]

15:51 I'm not a parent or a teacher, but how would a BTS view of Bullseye instill confidence in some kinda-decent educational television?

[@GryphLane]

They probably just went to the studio next door at Lenton Lane to record some shots, and it happened to be Bullseye being recorded

[@sophie_drachen]

There could've been an educational correlation, Jim Bowen (host of Bullseye) was a deputy headmaster before becoming better known as a TV presenter/comedian. It could've also been an excuse just to show the children how TV shows are made if they would want to go into directing and making TV shows.

[@grindelston5968]

Literally 'how we used to live'

[@Jill_SmokeandMirrors]

I was utterly phobic about the BBC dots. As a toddler if they came on while the TV was babysitting I'd scream the house down.

[@adultmoshifan87]

I started primary school in 1993. I have quite a bit of experience with school programming, which we mostly watched on VHS. My primary school had 3 buildings: a special needs unit, infants and juniors. I was in the special needs unit but transferred to the infants unit in 1995 because they felt I was too able. Across my time at all 3 buildings, most of the school programs we watched were from the BBC, including Number Time, Come Outside, Words and Pictures, Earth Warp and Through The Dragon's Eye, but we did also watch a few Channel 4 shows including Fourways Farm and Rat-a-Tat-Tat. I only remember ONE of the shows we watched being from ITV: Math is Fun. I do remember one other show we watched in Juniors, Zig Zag, but I don't know which channel was behind that one. Also a few times in the special needs unit, we were shown Australian kids show Lift Off! For the most part, my school years weren't pleasent. From 1993-1996, keep in mind I was given an extra year in Infants before starting Juniors due to developmental delay, things were mostly good, but in Juniors, things turned a bit dark and depressing, I turned mean and resentful and the school I was transferred to when my time as a primary student was almost over was terrible! I go by furikatsuma on DeviantArt and you can read a full explanation of my school years alongside my "Gumball and Spike comfort Lincoln" drawing.

[@ZombieRaisingRyan]

1:19 Freddie should of drunk some of that

[@applemask]

That's why they changed the slogan in the 80s.

[@ZombieRaisingRyan]

Great video, I remember the faffing about with the tele well 😊

[@danielwoodhouse5531]

Great video as usual Just a bit disturbed to see that Nonce Peter Rowell right at the very end.

[@applemask]

Fucksocks, I forgot all about him. Archive television is such a fucking minefield.

[@michelleballard9350]

I hated school senior school was the worst days of my life not the best days I was bullied all I wanted to do was not to go to school all my exams I failed because I couldn't concentrate properly I was glad to leave that was the best day of my life

[@centureye]

TV has changed alot, back then it was great now it all garbage

[@JagerLange]

27:14 - fewer true words have been said on KZbin.

[@SanFran51]

It's okay Billie Piper doesn't want to remember her pop career either.

[@sophie_drachen]

Nor does she want to remember who she went on to marry. For good reason too. Edit: Her second husband is a washed up actor and misogynistic pig.

[@Cyclonus-wm8gf]

Hate to be the negative nancy, but that buzz from your mic is making this a hard watch!

[@kevinwainwright31]

We had Betamax

[@TYTDReviews]

I saw the comment