BBC Trust definition of purpose remit

You can look to the BBC to help everyone in the UK to learn. An important role for the BBC is to support formal education in schools and colleges. In addition, the BBC will offer engaging ways for everyone in the UK to build their knowledge and skills across a broad range of subjects.

Purpose priorities

The BBC Trust, after public consultation, has divided this remit into three specific priorities:

1. Stimulate informal learning across a full range of subjects and issues for all audiences.
2. Engage audiences in activities targeted to achieve specific outcomes that benefit society.
3. Promote and support formal educational goals for children and teenagers and support adult education, especially related to essential skills development.

Purpose performance

Licence fee payers consider this to be one of the most important public purposes for the BBC and it is at the heart of the BBC's public service remit.

Audiences believe that the BBC performs strongly in stimulating informal learning. The reach and reputation of the BBC's factual output is generally strong across platforms and services. However, evidence suggests that the BBC will need to adapt its offer in this area in order to provide audiences with an even more valuable experience in the on-demand, multi-platform age, providing the chance for people to tailor their experience of factual, knowledge-building content to suit their personal needs.

In addition, the BBC Trust's Purpose Remit Survey identified a gap between audience expectations (particularly for licence fee payers with school-aged children) in relation to support for formal education when their views were sought on the following statements: "The BBC helps my children / teens with what they learn at school / college."

Beyond this specific survey, recent thinking in Government and the education world has highlighted the importance of people of all ages acquiring generic, transferable skills which help them to learn. The BBC intends to play an important and distinctive role here.

BBC management's response to purpose gaps

The BBC's knowledge strategy, combined with Delivering Creative Future, BBC management's six-year framework for the delivery of the BBC's purposes, sets out a strategy to meet the above challenges.

The main priorities of this strategy are as follows.

In informal learning and knowledge-building

• Covering a wide range of factual subjects, helping audiences to build their knowledge.
• Looking for ways of making factual programming enjoyable for diverse audiences, both mainstream and niche.
• Deepening the impact of content by investing more in multi-platform offerings which enable the audience to explore their interests and to build their knowledge further.
• Reducing the overall volume of programming in order to focus on quality, distinctiveness and innovation. This reduction will target output that currently achieves lower audience value in marginal parts of the schedule.

In formal learning

Since the suspension of the rollout of BBC Jam in March 2007, the BBC has been carefully considering the strategic direction of the formal learning portfolio for children, to maximise the value of the current offering and supplement it where necessary.

The overall strategy approved in principle by the BBC Trust is set out in more detail under priority 3 below. The main themes are:

• A focus on the acquisition of essential skills across the range of age-groups, building on current activities for teenagers and supplementing this with a new offering for younger children.
• Continuing support for children and teachers around the requirements of the different national curricula.
• Building the essential skills offer for adults, emphasising literacy, numeracy, and information communications and technology.

Delivering the purpose priorities

1 Stimulate informal learning across a full range of subjects and issues for all audiences

BBC Trust: "The BBC should enable people to learn about many different topics in ways they will find accessible, entertaining and challenging."

In line with the main priorities for the informal learning and knowledge-building strategy outlined above, the BBC will through its factual output:

• Help audiences build key literacies, through a wide range of factual subject matter, including natural history, science and medicine to build scientific literacy; history, art, music and religion to build cultural literacy; the democratic process, business, law and consumer affairs to build civic literacy; parenting, health, nutrition and gardening to build life literacy; and an understanding of how and why the media are made and presented in the way that they are, to support media literacy.
• Go beyond the mere provision of facts, selecting, organising and interpreting them to spark debate and deepen understanding. In doing this, the BBC will provide a platform for the leading minds, experts and scholars to present their ideas and interpretation of their subjects.
• Aim to engage both the mainstream and heartland audiences with its factual, knowledge-building output, creating programmes with broad appeal, including landmark factual programmes covering the full range of subjects on services such as BBC One and BBC Two. Modern approaches and talent will be used that can connect with contemporary audiences. Serious subject matter will be tackled in ways that are both accessible and thoughtful, and new technologies and production techniques will also be used to push the boundaries of creative excellence.
• Provide seasons of programming around particular subjects or themes, with complementary content provided on different channels or platforms.
• Develop the relationship between BBC Two and BBC Four, ensuring that the output of each actively and visibly complements that of the other, in both subject matter and approach.
• Use drama and entertainment techniques as an alternative means of access for a mainstream audience to factual subjects and to the experience of knowledge-building.

Beyond the mainstream, factual output will aim to take a more challenging, thoughtful and targeted approach:

• On services such as BBC Four and Radio 4, leaders in the field will be given platforms to explain complex, stretching ideas and interpretation, often in more serious subject areas such as applied sciences, philosophy, ethics and the high arts. There will be room to allow single issues to be considered in depth, either in single programmes or in a series or season of related content.
• The BBC's music-based services should broaden people's horizons and encourage them to explore beyond the mainstream by providing a range of music, including new and more challenging music, with supporting information for those who want to learn more.
• There will also be room for subjects to be covered from an international perspective, as well as from the viewpoint of a UK audience.
• Particular services will seek to engage specific target audiences in knowledge-building in ways and in subjects which are most relevant to them. For example, services for teenagers or young adults such as BBC Three and Radio 1 will tackle relevant topics such as health, body image, careers and personal finance. Children will be encouraged to find out more about the world around them through drama, comedy and entertainment, as well as factual programming on CBBC, and pre-school children will be provided with the opportunity to learn through play on CBeebies.
• In order to enhance the experience of the content that the BBC offers, it will provide an increasingly interconnected, multi-platform experience, helping audiences explore their interests and build their knowledge further, and deepening the impact of factual output.
• The BBC will increase investment in knowledge-building content areas on bbc.co.uk. This will provide audiences with new sources of knowledge and give them the tools to take a more active role in their relationship with the BBC, enabling them to explore subjects in more depth and contribute their own interpretation and opinions.
• News and Factual departments will work together to support knowledge-building. News stories can provide a topical prompt for audiences to explore information in greater depth. News and Factual will work closely to exploit opportunities for linking editorial information online, in subjects such as climate change, science, health, religion and arts.

2 Engage audiences in activities targeted to achieve specific outcomes that benefit society

BBC Trust: "The BBC should engage audiences in output that brings benefits to the UK as a whole. Such output might, for example, promote healthier living, or encourage an active interest in the UK's history, heritage and environment."

The BBC will continue to run targeted social action and learning activities and seasons which aim to deliver social benefits to individuals and the UK as a whole.

Such activity will often take the form of joint editorial initiatives, led by output in mainstream services but involving a wide range of BBC outlets, including those focused on particular audiences such as the young or people in different parts of the UK. Different approaches will be used to engage each type of audience, and the BBC will consult with representative groups to ensure that the most appropriate methods of engagement are employed and consideration is given to addressing the diverse needs of target groups, particularly disabled people and those from ethnic minority communities.

The BBC will work closely with partners at national and local level to deliver social action activities which have real and lasting impact and provide practical opportunities for personal or social development. Services targeted on particular audiences will focus on topics particularly relevant to them - for example, bullying for children and teenagers or parenting for young adults.

Interactivity and accessibility are key to engaging audiences in participation in this type of activity. All will have a strong central online element, often allowing audiences to make their own contributions and record their own learning journeys or the social benefits experienced in their own localities.

3 Promote and support formal educational goals for children and teenagers and support adult education, especially related to essential skills development

BBC Trust: "The BBC should maintain its key role of providing formal educational output for everyone in the UK, including skills for learning, work and life. The BBC should provide a safe environment for learning, especially for children."

The BBC's planned activities in support of formal learning fall into three main categories:

• Support for the acquisition of the essential skills needed by people of all ages, including skills such as literacy, numeracy, information communications and technology, knowledge and comprehension, managing information, thinking skills, problem-solving, decision-making, reflection, creativity, working with others, and workplace skills.
• Targeted support for curriculum learning, including materials for learners, teachers and parents.
• More specific activity around specific learning objectives including media literacy and citizenship, helping to equip licence fee payers - particularly those who may experience social exclusion - to be active, informed citizens.

The BBC's activities in support of skills will continue to build on the following key elements:

• Resources for pre-school children via CBeebies. Almost all broadcast content for this audience will feature the Early Learning Goals. With support materials for parents or carers, both broadcast and interactive online resources will provide a shared experience.
• Online initiatives for teenagers via bbc.co.uk, with a particular current focus on creative talents, science, design and entrepreneurship.
• Online skills initiatives for adults via bbc.co.uk, across reading and writing, numeracy and digital literacy.

In seeking to support skills acquisition across the whole age range, the BBC is proposing new resources for children aged 6-10, building on existing broadcast and online content for this audience.

Content relevant to curriculum requirements includes:

• Resources to support children as they revise for school exams.
• Audiovisual resources for teachers, which will increasingly be available on demand in highly searchable form, with clips of BBC programmes related to particular curriculum requirements.
• Resources relevant to different curricula in different parts of the UK, including content in different indigenous languages.

The BBC Trust has approved in principle the overall strategic direction for the learning portfolio - including the enhanced contribution to skills learning - subject to any necessary regulatory approvals.