ITV Schools (full name: Independent Television for Schools and Colleges) was the educational television service set up in 1957 by the Independent Television Authority, broadcasting learning programmes for children ages 5 to 18 across ITV-affiliated stations. It was an example of public service broadcasting on a commercial television network (as opposed to the public BBC and their service BBC Schools).
ITV moved its schools programming to Channel 4 and S4C in autumn 1987 although ITV continued to produce programmes and the service continued to use the ITV name for another six years. The last ITV Schools programme on Channel 4 aired on Monday 28 June 1993; Channel 4 continued to produce their own schools programmes for many years afterwards.
History
The service started with a small audience, limited largely to the London area via its weekday franchise-holder Associated-Rediffusion. The service expanded as stations were added to the ITV network, and continued for the next 30 years, broadcasting a schedule of memorable documentaries, drama and entertainment programmes aimed at children between the ages of 5 and 18. These were almost all made by the various companies of the ITV network, mainly the largest ones such as Thames Television, ATV, Central Independent Television, Granada Television and Yorkshire Television.
Until the early 1970s, broadcasting hours were regulated by the British government. The commercial broadcasters, therefore, reserved their most commercial output for peak viewing hours and used the remainder of their broadcasting hours to put out their contractually obligated programming, conveniently enough, at a time when children were at school. Networked programmes for schools and colleges were mostly made by the "big four" weekday broadcasters Yorkshire, Granada, Thames and ATV, and were screened during the late morning and early afternoon, after which the network would close down until children's programmes commenced later in the afternoon.
Following changes to the law taking effect from Monday 16 October 1972, which allowed an extra 20 hours of broadcasting a week, the schools broadcasts were moved to a morning slot, between the hours of 09:30 and 12:00 during term time. This enabled the ITV broadcasters to open up the afternoon schedule to sell advertising between programmes; advertising was strictly prohibited during schools broadcasts.
The ITV Schools broadcasts gave teachers access to a broad spectrum of teaching resources, such as documentary film with which to illustrate their regular lessons, or songs and stories for children to learn and discuss, and could be considered an early example of multimedia learning. Activities and booklets based on the programmes were available to teachers via the educational officers based at the local ITV companies, allowing students to develop a relationship with the regular broadcasts. Typically, schools were equipped for schools television with a couple of large television receivers, sometimes housed inside a wooden cabinet atop a wheeled trolley which could be moved between classrooms as required.
This arrangement lasted until Monday 29 June 1987.
Presentation
Schools programmes on ITV were generally between ten and twenty minutes in length. Unlike peak-time programmes (which were usually scheduled at times rounded up to the nearest five minutes), schools programmes were scheduled at very precise times, such as 10:03 or 11:32. Some individual regions, such as HTV Wales, sometimes showed their own programming instead of the network offerings, but would rejoin the network in time for the next scheduled programme, so it was necessary to devise a flexible presentation system which would allow the network to effectively fill the time between programmes without resorting to showing a blank screen. Network schools presentation was provided by ATV and later, Central Independent Television in Birmingham with live announcements made by ATV and Central's staff announcers including Mike Prince, Stewart White, Peter Davies and Su Evans.
Between programmes, interval music was played and a holding slide shown onscreen, identifying the service as Independent Television For Schools And Colleges and thus differentiating the service from the similar schools TV service run by the BBC, which were listed as "For Schools, Colleges" in the Radio Times until BBC Schools broadcasting moved to BBC2 in autumn 1983 with a new title of Daytime on Two. This holding slide could be shown for anything from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the length of time required to fill. A different theme for the holding slides was used each term, and usually each week a different slide would be used.