Award-winning BBC education section to close

The award-winning BBC Education Production department is to be disbanded, generating fears for the future standard of schools programmes.

The award-winning BBC Education Production department is to be disbanded, generating fears for the future standard of schools programmes.

Insiders are worried that the corporation will lose a unique centre of experience and talent at a time when the director general, Greg Dyke, has promised to put education at the heart of the BBC's work.

But BBC managers have rejected the concerns and insist the changes will expand the corporation's educational output and put schools and adult education at the centre of its production.

Education would be "integrated, not dissipated", said a spokeswoman.

The 200-strong department, which pioneered schools broadcasting and internet revision guides, will be split from October, with staff being moved into the corporation's mainstream television, radio and internet operation.

But senior staff and union leaders are angry and say there is concern for the long-term future of schools broadcasting.

One insider said: "The big question is that if you are going to have an education vision for the BBC you would have thought you would want to retain a skills base, and a skills base which has been growing in strength in terms of its ability to deliver.

"To break it up and say that material will come from other parts of the BBC is flying in the face of logic and the evidence coming from the market. Teachers do not want edu-tainment. They want materials which work in lessons."

The unit makes scores of specialist programmes for teachers to use in schools, and has developed content for the hugely successful GCSE Bitesize online revision project, used by thousands of teenagers each year. Internal research by the BBC found schools programmes were used by nine out of 10 schools and the department has secured a deal with the corporation's commercial arm to sell teaching materials overseas.

The shake-up has been prompted by the corporation's plans for a massive expansion of internet services. Senior managers are developing a set of national curriculum teaching materials and virtual lessons for broadcast over the internet.

Managers also have ambitious plans to link major programmes such as Walking with Dinosaurs and The Human Body with online education packages and more traditional courses.

But while The Human Body has proved popular in schools, plans to use Walking with Dinosaurs in schools foundered because the prehistoric world is not on the national curriculum.

A spokeswoman for the corporation said the new documentary and investigations, leisure and factual and education and specialist units would have education experts in key management positions.

Conventional schools programmes would still have a central role, but the change would allow schools and adult education specialists to make more use of mainstream BBC programmes.

The BBC spokeswoman said: "There has been a kind of feeling that education produces this fantastic work but sits outside the main programming areas.

"We are trying to bring it a bit into the mainstream. Education production is an isolated department and it is being split and distributed around the three new big programming areas."