主播大秀

A day’s programming is a curriculum unto itself.

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The 主播大秀: A Broad Cast

As the child and grandchild of teachers, it is a very real pleasure to be here today. And it is a privilege to represent the 主播大秀 and what we do in education.

The 主播大秀 was founded on a simple promise: to inform, educate and entertain. John Reith, the first Director General of the 主播大秀, coined this promise.

Education was central to it, quite literally. Reith saw a higher purpose in broadcasting. He knew the history of the term.

An education festival may be one of the few occasions I can get away with a brief tangent on etymology, so I will try.

Long before radio, let alone TV, to “broadcast” meant to sow seeds by scattering them widely by hand. The seeds were cast as broadly as possible. The intention was to allow them to grow and flourish, more evenly, and more readily.

It was then and is now a fitting idea to define the 主播大秀. To cast as broadly as we can, across the country and across society. And then to help us all to grow, flourish and achieve our full potential. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of education.

Today, I want to talk about the education strategy we launched last year. And I want, in particular, to discuss the opportunity I believe we have through the 主播大秀 to improve the life chances of all young people.

Elite Education For All

In the light of that subject, speaking today at Wellington is fitting. It is at fine schools like this one that we see the advantages of an education that extends far beyond the classroom.

Look around you. Look at the playing fields, the libraries and the theatres. They all tell you that not every lesson is taught in a classroom.

Yet the extra-curricular lessons of life are not evenly provided and this is where we think the 主播大秀 comes into this discussion.

By working with partners and using the unique reach of the 主播大秀, we can take the benefits of an elite education and extend them to all.

Starting at the Beginning

When the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland was wondering where to start, the King had some sage advice: “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end”.

This is wise advice if you want to make a difference to the life chances of a child.

Learning begins long before a child steps into the classroom. These are the years when wealthier children first move ahead of their peers.

In our first five years, our brains are developing rapidly.

James Heckman, an academic at the University of Chicago, estimates that early interventions can deliver a return on investment of up to 13 per cent. The progress is measured not just in better academic results, but also in improved social and economic outcomes: better health, reduced poverty and lower crime.

In the UK today, however, we are not preparing children equally. Nearly twenty per cent of all children arrive at school without the language and communication ability to thrive. In deprived areas, that figure doubles to almost forty per cent. Despite the intervention of committed teachers it is very hard to ever close that gap.

Too many children are simply not ready for school.

The seeds of inequality are first sown here.

At the 主播大秀, we want to halve both of those numbers. Over the course of our Charter, we want to halve the proportion of children starting school without the language and communication skills required to thrive. We know that is a huge task but we want to be ambitious.

To do so, we intend to reach 2.4 million adults in the country. That is 80 per cent of the 16-34 year old parents who have children under the age of five. And we need the right intervention.

We knew this intervention had to be based on the best available evidence, so last year we convened a Language Advisory Group.

It included representatives from the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists and LuCiD: the International Centre for Language and Communicative Development. And we also worked with the National Literacy Trust, the Education Endowment Foundation and Public Health England, amongst others.

Together, we developed an ambitious proposition that drew both on their expertise and on what we do best: creating compelling content.

The 主播大秀 reaches eight out of ten young people every week - we reach the parts of the day that other learning institutions don’t. We can use those moments to complement the formal interventions the public sector makes.

We can sow the seeds, and together with our partners, help them grow.

The initiative is called Tiny Happy People and at its core is a series of informative, educational and entertaining videos and online content, aimed at the parents of young children.

These show parents the vital role they play in the early development of their child, and how doing small things differently can have an outsized impact.

We believe this initiative could transform children’s vocabulary and communication skills.

We have run a trial of this initiative with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, initially with 89 parents. We asked them to each watch three pieces of content per week, but they liked them so much that on average they watched nine.

The feedback was extremely encouraging: 96% said that they would “probably” or “definitely” continue to use our service, 70% found the content reassuring, 63% were given new ideas for how to interact with their child. This was a small pilot so we can’t draw firm conclusions - but it was very encouraging.

Parents were particularly responsive to the science that sits behind the advice.

They were interested to learn that it is important to talk to a baby in the womb because, after birth, babies recognise voices they’ve heard. That babies need to be given space to ‘talk’ themselves. That babies really respond to you talking about what they are looking at.

The programme was grounded in that famous Reithian trinity.

First, information: raising the awareness of the importance of early cognition and development

Second, education: explaining the science behind this intervention

And then third, entertainment: delivering it all in a compelling and approachable manner that inspires parents to do new things.

In 2020, we intend to deliver this programme at scale. In the years that follow, I very much hope to stand in front of you to report dramatic improvements in school readiness.

Flourishing At School

But early years education is only the start.

We know that children from privileged backgrounds have radically better life chances when they arrive for their first day of school than their counterparts from less privileged homes. And once they reach school, the gap continues to grow.

This is partly a question of the academic resources available: here there is a considerable disparity.

A growing number of children from wealthier backgrounds are now using private tutors. There is a £2 billion industry in the UK dedicated to supplementing classroom learning.

For twenty years, the 主播大秀 has been offering its alternative to private tutoring: 主播大秀 Bitesize. We see Bitesize as the public service tutor: available online, whenever and wherever your students need it, free of charge.

This year, we updated Bitesize. We have improved the experience for students. It is easier to use and more interactive. And we have expanded its scope: both by adding more content, such as on the primary curriculum; and by expanding beyond the curriculum for the first time, into areas such as career guidance, wellbeing and resilience.

We are even making Bitesize a better teacher of itself using machine learning. In this way, Bitesize will become more personalised to students and a better support to their individual learning: moving quickly through what they already know and focusing on the questions they struggle with.

We believe that this personalised learning will improve even further Bitesize’s impact on grades.

A school like the one we are in today, however, shows us that there is more to a world-class education than just the curriculum.

Music is an important case in point. A good education always includes exposure to music and the chance to develop your own skills. But your background influences your chances of getting a musical education.

Eighty five per cent of private schools have an orchestra. In the most deprived category of state schools, just 12 per cent do.

It is therefore no surprise that the Royal Academy of Music takes 56 per cent of its students from private schools even though they educate only 7 per cent of the nation.

If we are not careful then the music industry, and the other creative industries, will become the realm of the privileged.

That really matters and not just because music is an enduring passion that leaps all class barriers.

It’s because music is also a critical component of a broader education, even if you never win a Brit or conduct the 主播大秀 Philharmonic.

The study of music improves our wider academic achievement. It makes us better at languages, reading and writing, even mathematics. It improves our well-being. It fills our life with joy.

With our distinctive range of music stations and our world class teams from orchestras to TV, reaching people in every corner of the UK, the 主播大秀 is uniquely positioned to spread the benefit of a musical education further.

That is why I am announcing today that, this September, we will launch a new campaign, Bring The Noise, to extend the joy of music-making to all children.

The research we have done with our partners suggests that the single greatest impact we can have is by helping teachers who are often not musicians themselves and so lack confidence teaching it – especially at early years and key stage 1.

The programme starts small - bite sized you might say - with just four songs: a manageable first step for teachers across the country to take.

And we will bring the full weight of 主播大秀 Music to bear in supporting it. There will be videos by famous artists to inspire teachers and kids. We are already working with the likes of Nile Rodgers and Dame Evelyn Glennie.

An interactive tool will make classes easy to follow in the classroom or at home.

Support films will be created for teachers: from Gareth Malone teaching singing, to peer-to-peer resources, where teachers will teach each other.

Bring the Noise fits neatly within our existing work in music education.

In 2014, we launched Ten Pieces, opening up the world of classical music to seven to fourteen year-olds by encouraging young people to develop their own creative responses to ten pieces of classical music. It has reached 10,000 schools and five million children, sold out three Proms, and even won a Bafta.

If Bring the Noise lays the seeds of a musical education, then through Ten Pieces they flourish.

We want to give all children access to an education in music, whatever their background. Who knows quite how a child will blossom when they hear beautiful music?

We know our part, though. We will bring the noise and let the music play.

All of these campaigns are, of course, in addition to the programming that the 主播大秀 creates.

A day’s programming is a curriculum unto itself.

At 6.55am, five minutes of Mathematics.

At 7.55am, fifteen minutes of Geography.

Then, at 8.10am, ten minutes of Marine Biology.

Then, at 9.15am, five minutes of Linguistics.

A quick break and then straight back into lessons on the basic principles of Engineering before we finish off with a Science lesson. It’s a pretty full morning.

First was Numberblocks: music and mathematics in harmony.

Then Go Jetters: four superheroes and a unicorn exploring our planet and its geography.

Then Octonauts: Captain Barnacles and his crew exploring the sea.

Alphablocks: talking letters teaching phonics.

Then we finished off with Bitz and Bob, your primer in engineering and Kit and Pup which is an introduction to scientific method.

As a parent who has recently been corrected by their three-year old on the topic of marine biology, I can confirm that these shows work. And I can also confirm that whale sharks are not, in fact, (as I thought they were) dangerous.

My upbraiding by my daughter actually touches on the most enduring component of the 主播大秀’s work in education.

I have heard experts in History talk about the positive influence of Horrible Histories on students who are now entering university.

I have heard experts in English Literature talk about the impact of Harry Potter on a generation of young readers.

Children’s TV is as good an example as there is of how we make entertainment educational and education entertaining.

Captain Barnacles is not frivolous; it is serious business.

Indeed, the exceptionally talented teams who create these shows know precisely the lessons they are teaching.

In wealthier and more educated households, the access to learning that we are surrounded by enters by osmosis. In more deprived households, this kind of head-start is harder to find.

We believe that 主播大秀 programming can play a huge part in bridging this gap. So much education happens at home and we are privileged to be a visitor to those homes.

Our children’s programming also goes beyond the curriculum. I think it is fair to say that we are living in extraordinary times, and we know that teachers, parents and children are searching for answers to the changing world round them, and the big debates of our time. Newsround plays a key role in engaging young people in these topics at home and at school, and we will continue to support that.

The same privilege extends, of course, to our adult programming.

All of us here know the joy of a life of learning. I am hugely lucky that the other half of my job is to lead 主播大秀 Radio. Every day I learn something new from the shows that I listen to.

Sometimes this happens directly, when I seek it out: tuning into In Our Time to fill holes in my knowledge. But often it happens indirectly.

The other week I learnt more about fashion than I ever expected to know, simply by listening to Radio 2, where I tuned in for Jo Whiley and stumbled on to her discussing the Dior exhibition at the V&A.

I don’t know when that information will come in useful but I know it will and, when it does, I will surprise whoever I am talking to with my expertise.

With any luck it will be my daughter.

There is a wealth of educational content on the 主播大秀. So much, in fact, that it can be hard to know what is there.

This is especially true for teachers who are just about the definition of time-poor.

To help, last year we launched , dedicated to producing and curating educational content from across the 主播大秀 in one place, all linked and tagged by the UK curricula, so teachers know what is relevant to what they are teaching.

For instance, we created some short bespoke films off the back of the 主播大秀 One documentary Stephen Lawrence: The murder that changed a nation.

These link to GCSE citizenship and are a free tool for teachers to use to discuss tough topics around race and identity.

Education is Wellbeing

Education is at the heart of the 主播大秀.

But I have always thought that to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ tells us what the 主播大秀 does, but not necessarily why.

And I want to end today with that 'why'.

In education, one way or another, most things find their way back to Aristotle.

For Aristotle, the richest, fullest and most fulfilling lives were those where happiness and wellbeing were achieved through the pursuit and attainment of learning.

This ultimately, I think, is the purpose of 主播大秀 Education. This is why we do what we do.

Education is an important passport into the world: the grades and certificates matter. Education is the key that can unlock social mobility and reduce inequality.

But education is more fundamental than exams or social mobility. Education is the key to wellbeing.

A life of culture is a happy, rich and fulfilling one. The word culture itself embodies the idea of growth. The opportunity to flourish and live our fullest, most fulfilling and complete lives.

This is what the ‘broad cast’ of the 主播大秀 can achieve.

The broadest possible scattering of seeds: across the country, across social and economic divides, across ages and eras. Then the process of tending that growth and the talent that springs forth from that potential. That is the promise of the 主播大秀 and 主播大秀 Education.

A society that achieves its full human potential, and in doing so is - quite simply - happier.

That is the reason, as I said at the start, it has been such a pleasure to be here today.

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