Webchat with Helen Foulkes, Head of BBC Education, Wednesday 22 April at 1pm

[BojanaMumsnet]

Hello

We're pleased to announce a webchat with Helen Foulkes, Head of BBC Education including BBC Bitesize, at 1pm on Wednesday April 22.

As lots of you will already know, the BBC has announced a programme of learning resources with the aim of supplementing online schoolwork during lockdown. You can see the BBC’s announcement about what they’ve got lined up here, and see some of the new Bitesize Daily content for children aged 5 to 14 here.

Helen Foulkes is Head of BBC Education, overseeing BBC Bitesize, BBC Teach, BBC Food and the BBC’s educational campaigns. The BBC says that “Bitesize is the most used educational website in the UK, used by 80% of secondary school students”. Those of you who work in education may also know about BBC Teach, which “supports teachers with curriculum linked content for use in the classroom and education campaigns that address a societal or educational deficit, from Ten Pieces and Super Movers to BBC micro:bit.”

Prior to working in BBC Education Helen had a wide range of executive producer credits including Points of View, Country Tracks, See Hear, and To Buy or Not to Buy. Before becoming an executive she worked across a multitude of BBC programmes such as Holiday, Homefront and What Not to Wear.

Please join us here on Wednesday at 1pm to chat all things BBC Education and lockdown learning. If you can’t join us on the day, please post up your question in advance.

As always, please remember our guidelines - one question per user, follow-ups only if there’s time and most questions have been answered, and please keep it civil. Also if one topic is dominating a thread, mods might request that people don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point. (We may suspend the accounts of anyone who continues after we've posted to ask people to stop, so please take note.) Rest assured we will ALWAYS let the guest know that it's an area of concern to multiple users and will encourage them to engage with those questions.

Many thanks,
MNHQ

My children really enjoy the Bitesize content, and I appreciate learning on the TV as I can't supervise online school work while I'm working myself. I'd like to know if you have any plans to repeat old schools programmes? I remember some so well, particularly music ones from 30+ years ago.

I really appreciate the programmes particular how quickly you have pulled together. The programmes cross reference a number of games/programmes on the web. It would be useful if they were incorporated into the show to make the programme for complete, increase they length of programme and help parents (so don’t have to search for the various links)

Hello everyone

Thanks for all the questions so far. I'm looking forward to answering them.

@BoffinMum

Hello, and thanks for coming onto MN for a webchat.

I'm a university professor in education, have a PGCE and also I am the mother of four children.

My question is what professional advice did you call upon for developing the new Bitesize 'Red Button' programmes?

I ask because we tried looking at the BBC Bitesize programmes today, and really wanted to like them, but gave up because they are pitched so low. For example, the Y7 Maths was covering things the children had done in very ordinary state primary schools in Y2 (positive and negative numbers). We worked our way through the different age bands and finally tried with the age 14-15 offer for each subject, but that wasn't much better in terms of fit, apart from eventually with the History, so we very reluctantly gave up in the end.

This isn't a stealth boast in any way, it really was years off what typical children do in typical schools and such a lost opportunity. So I was genuinely wondering where your professional advice had come from.

Hello BoffinMum,

Thanks for your comments.

Bitesize Daily programmes on Red Button/BBC iPlayer and the online Bitesize Daily lessons on bitesize.co.uk have all been designed with input from teachers and teaching consultants.

When we started to pull the offer together four weeks ago we put out a UK wide survey to get a sense from teachers what would be most useful for parents at home, while complimenting what teachers were already providing.

Every aspect of our curriculum online and on broadcast is planned by a teacher, every book we select is okayed by a teacher, every online guide we produce is written or reviewed by a teacher and every script is checked by teachers to ensure its curriculum relevant and couched in a way that kids will understand.

We worked with teachers we have already worked with as well as once who have been referred to us by the Department of Education or by organisations referred to us by them such as the National Centre for Excellence in Teaching of Maths. Organisation such as Twinkle and TES also gave us their teacher consultants to work with.

The broadcast on iPlayer there to support and structure a learning day with further content available for further study on Bitesize online.

Bitesize Daily isn’t there to replace school and teaching – we never could – but is there to support parents and supplement what is already being sent home. Of course every child is different but I hope on Bitesize online you can find content that will be helpful.

For Fredericaquartet and SparklyNail7 and everyone else with Year 10 kids - we have a daily lessons online for year 10 in English, Maths and one other curricular subject each day -this can be found on the site under the Daily lessons tab.

Also we have lots of other content for a range of GCSEs on our regular Bitesize offer – just click on the secondary button and pick your subject.

We also have a Bitesize Daily broadcast to offering core concepts in English, Maths and one other subject as well as motivational and wellbeing tips.

We’re ramping up our offer for Year 10 on social from next week. We’ll have a weekly, teacher-led Instagram live show for this age group where they can send questions in advance, chat with friends, and play along with quizzes.

We hope you check it out!

@ShimmerandShining

I am wondering why the BBC Bitesize Scottish offering is so much better than the English ones? The programmes are three times as long! Why? An hour a day per age group would be far more useful than 20 Mins and also more valuable to parents. I'm disappointed tbh

Dear ShimmerandShinning

I’m sorry you are disappointed. The Bitesize Daily programme is an bespoke offer that we have pulled together in the last four weeks…each day on iPlayer for year groups 1 - 10 there will be a new 20 mins programme per age group every day for the whole of the summer term – it works for curricular across all Nations.

The Scottish offer complements this, but is focused on their local curriculum, using a number of pre-recorded broadcasts to support parents through this period.

We’re also going to do this. Our Live Lessons will land on iPlayer soon – these are a longer watch, and include collaborations with the Roald Dahl Foundation and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. From next week we will also have a range of short teacher talk films explaining different core concepts in English and Maths.

There are also loads more videos, quizzes and interactives available on BBC Bitesize online – the TV is just an intro to what we have available.

@AntiSocialDistancer

I'm so pleased you're doing this, thank you I have 3 primary school children.

I suppose im curious if this will all wind down again when the schools reopen or if Bitesize is looking to expand long term.

Will there be projects and printables like on Twinkl?

Thank you for your kind words AntisocialDistancer

Bitesize Daily will only be there while schools are closed and we are working closely with Twinkl to offer printables and projects for this time period as we have in the past…..once school closures are over our classic Bitesize offer which focuses on revision, practice and self study will remain – I hope you and your 3 primary school children keep using our content long after this crisis is over.

A number of you have talked about the content not being challenging enough or long enough for your child so I wanted to talk about that.

Bitesize is pitched at an average student and we work with many teachers to make sure our content is right for them.

You know your children and their level so using content for other age groups or using other content on the site is a great idea.

Our lessons are also designed to be used to compliment lessons that are already being supplied by schools and teachers – we are not there to replicate a school day. However we do have lots of content on Bitesize online for pupils to explore.

We are broadcasting the programmes on the Red Button. Primary at 9am and Secondary at 10am to aid with structure and routine and then there are programmes throughout the day from Cbeebies and CBBC that include education content. We are hoping to put more BBC Education content on that channel over time and all the lessons online are there to use as parents wish to help build into their own routines.

@noblegiraffe

Thank you for the massive package of educational content that has been put together in such a short time. As a teacher and parent it will be very useful!

There is a real and pressing concern that disadvantaged pupils will fall further and further behind while schools are closed due to lack of facilities for online learning. Obviously more families have access to TVs and radios than they do laptops so you are in a great position to bridge the gap here. Lots of educational sites are giving free access to their resources at the moment, are there any plans to waive the licence fee requirement for access to the BBC’s educational output while schools are closed?

Hi NobleGiraffe – the licence fee is what allows us to be able to make an offer of this breadth and depth at this pace.

That said, anyone can access the wealth of Bitesize content online whether they have a licence or not and this is all optimised to do on your phone too. We know over 80% of teenagers have a smartphone, and loads of kids have tablets so hopefully many will still be able to access this way.

@coughcoughcoughitty

I felt ridiculously patriotic when I read the BBC was planning this - thank you.

My sons are Y10 and Y12 so gearing up for GCSEs and A Levels respectively. I know my older son found Bitesize useful for GCSE revision so can I ask what the thinking was behind not providing content for older students on the channel? Is it just a question of priorities (which would be understandable)?

Thanks so much Coughcoughcoughitty.

Hopefully you saw the post to TheFredericaquartet and Sparklynails7 about our provision for Year 10.

Bitesize doesn’t cater for A’levels although we do offer support content and careers content for this. BBC Four is running programmes in the evening that correspond with the A’level and GCSE subject through documentaries and dramas.

@herecomesthsun

We are finding it difficult to access even the 20 minute Bitesize slots on the TV /iplayer and also difficult to access Bitesize on the children's kindles. Could you not just broadcast the programmes in a timetabled sequence so kids could just tune in?

We are broadcasting the programmes on the Red Button. Primary at 9am and Secondary at 10am and then there are programmes throughout the day from Cbeebies and CBBC that include education content. And we are hoping to put more BBC Education content on that channel over the summer.

@Paurie

I love that you’re doing this.

I notice that the afternoon red button programmes rotate - I’m fine with this - but could you fix it so that there is never a repeat in the same timeslot? So, for example, 3pm it works for our schedule to watch the TV - I
like to just turn on red button to avoid debate between the kids / faff - but on Thursday the same program is showing as Monday which will mess with our routine.

(Autistic kids here - so maybe this matters more to us - but in a world where there is an almost overwhelming amount of learning content online/ from school - it’s a really helpful fixed point to say ‘we watch red button at these times because BBC says so’)

I’ll feed this back to the Red Button team Paurie.

Also wanted to let you and AutumnCrow know we have a page with a toolkit for parents with children who have SEND which you can access through the homepage of Bitesize if that is helpful.

Here's the link

www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zh9v382

Thanks very much for replying! and for doing this chat.

I am thinking that more comprehensive and more clearly timetabled educational content over the course of the school day would be really helpful, more on the lines of previous Open University modules. In fact, some of those more accessible modules would be great to stretch bright secondary students without huge outlay in programme making. More information about timetabled content would be helpful so that parents don't have to do so much sifting through to get 20 minutes of something useful.

I found it quite hard to find on the BBC iPlayer website.
Could you make it more prominent or even set education up as a channel?

As another parent with a child who has ASD our household would also value the lessons scheduled on live TV.

Thanks for your answers so far

@Survivingchipandkippee

I really appreciate the programmes particular how quickly you have pulled together. The programmes cross reference a number of games/programmes on the web. It would be useful if they were incorporated into the show to make the programme for complete, increase they length of programme and help parents (so don’t have to search for the various links)

This list can be found on the Bitesize homepage

Here's the link.
www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z6vpnrd

Hope this helps.

@whysohungryagain

Hello,

Thanks for doing this webchat, I'm looking forward to reading your answers later. I am nosy interested to know what this was like behind the scenes - are you all working from home? How big was the team? Was this a lot more challenging to set up than other projects given the current circumstances and urgency?

Thanks for the question. It was about 4 weeks ago when we started planning Bitesize Daily, so about a week before it was announced schools would be closing. Like the majority of us the whole team has been working from home wherever we can. We’ve all got really used to video conferencing, and meeting one another’s families and pets!

There are a small team running the studio set up at MediaCity in Salford, but we’ve taken extra precautions to ensure social distancing. We have a team of just over 100 in BBC Education, and almost all were redeployed onto some aspect of this campaign overnight.

It great to get this feedback because when you turn things round so quickly there is always things that you can improve.

Thank you for all the comments about the timetable – I will feed that back to the teams and see what we can do.

We'll also talk to iPlayer about making the content more prominent.

@herecomesthsun

Thanks very much for replying! and for doing this chat.

I am thinking that more comprehensive and more clearly timetabled educational content over the course of the school day would be really helpful, more on the lines of previous Open University modules. In fact, some of those more accessible modules would be great to stretch bright secondary students without huge outlay in programme making. More information about timetabled content would be helpful so that parents don't have to do so much sifting through to get 20 minutes of something useful.

Thanks for the feedback - we'll take it on board.

Thanks for all the questions and feedback. I hope my answers have been useful. Best of luck with the home schooling.

Helen

Thanks so much to Helen for joining us today and to everyone who posteda question - we hope you found it helpful. We're going to close this thread now.