BBC Bitesize – not up to scratch?
It’s a few issues since we took the BBC to task for its educational endeavours, but they certainly have a talent for getting people offside. Verity Stob, a writer in The Register, began by writing about how she disliked the BBC and many organisations involved in education, calling IT, ‘ICT’. This led to a huge response from readers who complained about not just the BBC’s penchant for ‘ICT’, but also pointed out an unacceptable level of factual mistakes in the BBC Bitesize GCSE ICT revision guide.
This criticism has hit the BBC in their educational Achilles heel, because if they want to continue to receive public funds and to discharge their Reithian educational remit, then they need to do stop developing me-too products that mimic what is already available from the private sector.
In reality the BBC seems seem far more intent on using licence fee funds to build a portfolio of branded education content (BBC jam, BBC Learning, the BBC Schools Shop, etc) as part of their strategy to survive should their financial settlement decline, or if their Royal Charter is ever rescinded.
BBC education needs an overhaul. They need to stop producing poor quality, cash-cow products that trade on the BBC’s reputation and start producing content which improves educational standards, rather than seeing education as an easy revenue stream.