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Path: Advocacy > BBC > Your BBC, Your Say |
‘Your BBC, Your Say’
A NIACE Response to the public consultation on the future of the British
Broadcasting Corporation
Published: March 2004
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Key Points
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Introduction
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The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) works to encourage more and different adults to engage in learning of all kinds. Its functions include research, development and consultancy; advocacy to inform and influence public policy; information services and dissemination; campaigning for, and celebrating the achievements of, adult learners. Established as the British Institute of Adult Education in 1921, it is an independent non-governmental organisation, a registered charity (No. 1002775) and company limited by guarantee (No. 2603322). Its corporate and individual members come from all sectors concerned with adult learning: colleges; local authorities; universities; voluntary and community organisations; churches; broadcasters, employers and unions.
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NIACE’s broad aim is to advance the interests of adults as learners and as potential learners. Its strategic plan commits the organisation to "support an increase in the total numbers of adults engaged in formal and informal learning in England and Wales; and at the same time to take positive action to improve opportunities and widen access to learning opportunities for those communities underrepresented in current provision".
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From its earliest years NIACE has recognised and valued the contribution that broadcasting makes to adult education: As long ago BIAE and the BBC set up a joint Committee of Enquiry, which produced a report New Ventures in Broadcasting (published by the BBC). This led to the formation of the Central Council for Broadcast Adult Education, as a forum for the co-operation of adult education organisations with the BBC. In more recent years other milestones in the relationship between the BBC and adult learning occurred with the national literacy campaign (On The Move) in the 1970s and, most recently the link between the national Adult Learners’ Week (established and co-ordinated by NIACE) and BBC initiatives like Computers don’t Bite and Bitesize. NIACE is a strong supporter of the BBC and its distinctive public service mission.
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This response starts with NIACE’s particular interest as an education-focussed organisation in the relationship between the BBC and lifelong learning. It then makes a number of broader points about the review which are informed by NIACE’s perspective as an NGO concerned to contribute to a diverse, inclusive and active democratic society.
Educational programming as a cornerstone of public service broadcasting
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Educational programming for adults is a crucial component of public service broadcasting and has been ever since the founding of the BBC. It is important to note that this is not just about programmes for schools and colleges and those which have an explicitly didactic approach. It is about both formal and informal learning.
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`Educational programming’ has an underlying specific educational purpose, often with a cumulative sequential agenda and aiming at a specific target group. It can include major public education campaigns such as basic skills, education for citizenship, family literacy, home safety and health education. While the producers of educative programmes see their educational purpose as very important, it is likely to be secondary and incidental to their goals of information and entertainment. It is also understood that with the addition of well-prepared support materials, in print or on-line, the educative effects of much general output broadcasting can be enhanced to the benefit of many potential learners.
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There is, however, a real danger, that without constant vigilance, such socially-purposive programming may be vulnerable to being transferred off-screen and off-air and will therefore cease to be widely available through analogue transmission until switchover.
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There is no question that when ITV’s educational broadcasting obligations were relaxed by legislation in 1990, pressure on broadcasters to achieve ratings and market share resulted in dedicated educational programming being marginalised within the schedules of the mass channels, migrating to minority channels or night time and being pushed off screen and onto web-sites. The BBC too reduced its on-screen educational output when it was moving much of its educational activity on line. While some of the new developments on-line are innovatory and imaginative, such as the `learning journey’ model, they are not yet substitutes for universally available on-screen broadcasting. Such new forms of delivery may well be satisfactory for the needs of schools, professional groups and institutions such as FE colleges or the Open University, or for adults who are already kitted up, motivated and know what they want to learn, but they do not deliver the power of broadcasting to capture the imagination and curiosity of the community as a whole and to stimulate people who have not previously taken part in any learning.
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NIACE has been particularly concerned about apparent reductions in on-screen educational analogue programming on BBC1 and BBC2 in case the genre effectively vanishes before the transfer of obligations at the time of digital switchover.
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Television has to play an important role in fostering an active and participative democracy. Most people learn about news and current affairs from television and, in practice, the agenda of public debate and political discussion is shaped by the media. But the key function in securing informed citizenship requires particular and continual additional attention in order to ensure that, as well as day-to-day news reporting, the media offer a range of programmes for different audiences providing its context and a chance to learn about issues, to help citizens understand the world and to engage with it.
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Educational programming is not just an issue for broadcasters. The Government has consistently identified the need to stimulate demand for education and training among adults as a key prerequisite of its lifelong learning policy. That policy has no hope of success without the reach of universally available broadcasting and the imaginative engagement of broadcasters. The Charter review must not only protect but must also re-prioritise one of the jewels in the BBC’s crown.
What distinguishes educational programmes for adults?
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Reaching adults and encouraging them to learn requires very different arrangements and strategies than those appropriate for children and young people. The so-called digital curriculum being developed for schools is not relevant for adults, neither is there any particular programme format which is more or less suitable for educational programming. Educational programming is led by its purpose, to encourage people to learn or to find out more. It may or may not be expensive to make. It may cover the same topics as a current affairs programme, but it is not driven by current news values. It is often distinguished by its run-up and follow-up and partnership arrangements and requires longer advance notice to enable external partners to plan to make best use of it. The easy assumption that factual programming is also likely to be automatically educational is a fallacy.
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A more serious issue is the fact that educational programming tends to be a ‘Cinderella’ genre. At the same time other editors or programme-makers tend to be jealous of its protected slots and budgets and when, as has often happened, education develops an area of programming which becomes, as it were, ‘too’ successful, the tendency is for it to be taken out of the education departments and be given over to ‘factual’ or ‘features’ departments. An early example of this some decades ago was gardening. The current example is history. The distinction between ‘educative’ and ‘educational’ programming has shaped much of the recent debate to the disadvantage of explicitly educational programmes some of which, as languages and numeracy, require carefully planned sequential content. It is relatively easy to wrap around documentary style or other factual programming to enhance its educative value. It has been suggested that it may be easier in the future to find a place for explicitly educational programmes in a multi-channel environment, but there is little sign of this as yet. With the exception of the proposed Teachers’ Channel, all previous attempts at setting up a specialist education and training channel in this country, have unlike the US, so far come to nothing. The programmes that are likely to suffer are the less popular, but often more needed ones: for older people, for the disabled, in areas like basic skills; and of course the more instructional and specific but less glamorous series. There has not, for example, been a regular informative series for older people for over a decade.
Access for all - the reach of programming
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In considering how the Charter review might best assess the contribution the BBC should make to lifelong learning, NIACE believes that it is important to take account of the balance across all platforms. NIACE would be concerned if the BBC were to discharge its educational and broader social-purpose programming through only a small number of niche platforms - some of which might be inaccessible to important groups within the population - including, for example, older people and poorer people who have the lowest rates of take-up of digital and on-line services. Some important areas such as health education, basic skills, parenting, and campaigns need to reach their target audiences through mainstream on-screen and on-air broadcasting.
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Even where niche digital services have been seen as solutions, NIACE notes that the BBC has not always delivered upon its promises in respect of education. It originally promised an educational channel on its digital terrestrial multiplex. The project moved on to satellite as the Learning Channel, was changed to the Knowledge Channel, showing mainly documentaries, and finally touched ground as BBC4, but as an evening only channel, described as a place to `think’, but not as a place to `learn’.
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NIACE believes that the BBC’s educational programming obligations should be channel and station specific. Each should be charged with appropriate obligations, for example placing community or citizenship education or even media literacy on the mass-audience BBC1 with and distinctive foci for other platforms such as BBC3 and Radio1.
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Whilst a new Charter will not go into any detail about the delivery of particular kinds of programming, educational broadcasting for adults illustrates the importance of the balance to be struck between the potential of multi-channel services to attract and serve niche audiences and the power of the mass channels to reach large sections of the population, promote social cohesion, encourage common cultural and democratic values and transmit high-profile public service messages (for example health education awareness campaigns).
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It is particularly important for the Charter review to note the distribution of access to the BBC’s portfolio of services. For example the differences between young adults and older people, far fewer of whom live in multi-channel households and are therefore more dependent for variety on analogue channels. They are also more housebound and less well kitted up with newer technologies, such as the internet. Figure 1 (below) shows the extent of what has been characterised as ‘the digital divide’.
Figure 1: BBC Charter demographics- access to the internet and multi-channel TV
| Internet access | No internet access | Multi-channel TV | No multi-channel TV | |
| All respondents = 1949 | 51 | 49 | 55 | 45 |
| Male | 56 | 44 | 60 | 40 |
| Female | 47 | 53 | 50 | 50 |
| Age: | ||||
| 17-19 | 70 | 30 | 68 | 32 |
| 20-24 | 55 | 45 | 57 | 43 |
| 25-34 | 65 | 35 | 65 | 35 |
| 35-44 | 68 | 32 | 66 | 34 |
| 45-54 | 60 | 40 | 57 | 43 |
| 55-64 | 42 | 58 | 49 | 51 |
| 65-74 | 23 | 77 | 40 | 60 |
| 75 & over | 6 | 94 | 25 | 75 |
| Social class: | ||||
| AB | 80 | 20 | 60 | 40 |
| C1 | 65 | 35 | 57 | 43 |
| C2 | 48 | 52 | 62 | 38 |
| DE | 25 | 75 | 46 | 54 |
Source: RSGB Omnibus survey, February 2004 Percentages are horizontal
Top-slicing
- Whilst supporting the principle of the licence fee, NIACE does not, however, support proposals floated around the time of the last Broadcasting Act to top-slice this in order to make a tranche of funding available to be bid for by other public service broadcasters. It is difficult to see how it could be made to work equitably, let alone be integrated in a coherent way into programme plans and programme schedules. Who would do the selection? Would it be of programmes or series? While it would be fun to cherry-pick, it is unlikely to meet the criteria laid out in the Act. The assumption that such programming is necessarily for low audiences or for ghetto scheduling is quite wrong. It is likely to be of high quality, usually produces high appreciation indices and high levels of long-term effects.
An overall perspective
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NIACE believes that it is essential to maintain a BBC of sufficient scale and scope, with the capacity to provide information, education and entertainment, together with the means for citizens to interact and participate, across a variety of platforms, and from local to national levels. It shares much of the analysis of how this might be secured with its fellow NGO Public Voice.
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The BBC needs to be party to a new ‘social contract’. In return for maintaining its scale, scope and funding base, it will need a clear core mission, more explicitly ‘owned’ by the public, involving a continued culture change towards serving citizens as active ‘users’ of information, coupled with extended parliamentary accountability, and stricter conditions on its services. The BBC must continue to raise standards across the market and, where possible, ‘make the market’ for programming that provides high quality, independent information and education.
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In order to do this, the Charter needs to be radically rewritten as clear, comprehensible public documents setting explicit public expectations of the BBC’s purposes and social role. It should clearly state that the ‘principal purpose of the BBC is to serve the communications needs, rights and interests of citizens’.
Shape and content of BBC services
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23. Services providing clear and measurable ‘public service added value’ should be made part of all the ‘core services’ of the BBC (including BBC Online) that are recognised in the Agreement, and thereby removed from continual review by the Secretary of State. Those services providing no clear and measurable ‘public service added value’ should be re-organised or removed. ‘Services’ in this sense may mean either whole channels or specific areas of content such as individual websites within the online presence. Where broadcast services are removed, their spectrum should be reserved for continuing public service use, either by the BBC or by other not-for-profit providers
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24. The mass TV channels should ensure that they maintain and, where necessary, improve their performance in providing the public service defined in Section 264 of the Communications Act
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25. The BBC World Service should remain on the same organisational and funding basis. UK citizens’ access to its content should increase towards universality.
Funding arrangements
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26. The licence fee should be retained. Citizens need a BBC of sufficient scale and scope to provide universal services; to provide multimedia and cross-platform services; and to provide services at all geographical levels, from local to national and international. Licence fee funding is a proven mechanism to fund these services.
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27. There is no justification for taking the public money generated by the licence fee, and redistributing it to private commercial providers seeking to maximise shareholder value. Furthermore, any such mechanism would distort accountability. The licence fee provides a clear linkage between ‘our money’ and ‘Our BBC’ which is essential to maintain the BBC’s accountability to the public. The public has no way to hold private commercial providers to account.
Governance and regulation
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The governors, as a body holding the BBC in public trust, need to be re-organised to ensure they include sufficient breadth and depth of expertise in broadcasting, new media, publishing, and civil society partnerships.
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Appointment mechanisms must be reviewed to ensure that the governing body appoints for expertise directly related to BBC purposes.
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‘Normal’ market regulators may not be appropriate for a body held in public trust, to serve the needs of citizens. Governing and regulating such a body requires the application of principles and values, rather than a straight ‘reading off’ of regulatory requirements. The public must be confident that ‘citizens interests’ will always be prioritised in the regulation of such a body.
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Any real or perceived conflicts of interest must be avoided. This cannot be the case where a market regulator has commercial ‘stakeholders’ in the same market(s) - particularly where the regulator’s operations are funded, through levies or fees, by those commercial stakeholders.
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Therefore any new proposals to remove regulatory responsibility from the governors will need to explore new models which are equally independent of government, the BBC and existing regulators; and which maintain public accountability via parliament.
Conclusion
- NIACE would be pleased to elaborate on any or all of the matters covered in this response. Please contact, in the first instance, the Director, Alan Tuckett.
NIACE
20 Princess Road West
Leicester
LE1 6TP
Website: www.niace.org.uk
e-mail: enquiries@niace.org.uk
