25 years since ITV Schools ended.

That’s true - and there still are differences between half term weeks and the terms themselves, particularly in Scotland who have an earlier summer break and longer half-term breaks.

The reason for the half-term repeat week in the Autumn and Spring Terms was to account for the different half-term holidays across the country. In the Summer Term, broadcasts were suspended for the week of the Spring Bank Holiday rather than repeating a week of programmes, as this half-term holiday was more standardised. That said, it was impossible for the varying holidays in every council area, let alone nation, to be fully accounted for. The fact many programmes had an encore showing later in the week helped alleviate the issue of ad-hoc school closure days, such as Roman Catholic Holy Days, or INSET days (and their predecessors).

Off-topic, but I remember we used to colloquially call the Autumn half-term “blackberry week” and the Summer half-term “Whit Week”, although the latter ceased coinciding with Whitsun (7 weeks after Easter) long before I started school, and I rarely went blackberry-picking in October either!

Were there different schools programme schedules between different ITV companies to take into account different term dates for the majority of schools in their region?

Border was a tricky one as it served three countries with three different education systems and three different term dates. STV and Grampian could focus entirely on the Scottish education system.

No, the term always began and ended on the same days in all regions (except that any programmes a region may have missed because of, for example, industrial action, would have been shown in that region after the end of the networked term). Schools was very much a networked service via a “presented feed”. There were, of course, some regional variations and, for a while, a few regions maintained a later startup and moved some programmes to the afternoon (more details in an earlier post) but other than that the transmission dates were uniform across the country.

It is interesting to know that before the restrictions were lifted on broadcasting hours in the UK in 1972, schools programming was the main daytime television in the UK.

I remember my parents saying that in the 1960s, if you wanted morning or afternoon television, schools programmes was the main provider. Along with sports, adult education Welsh language programming and some state occasions. Amazing.

In 1968, television in the UK was restricted to just 7 hours of normal entertainment programming in a day, which was usually saved for 5.00pm until Midnight by both the BBC and ITV. Schools, adult education, Welsh language programming filled the rest of the hours in the day.

The restrictions were abolished in 1972. (I’m sure Channel TV still had restrictions for a further decade or so) ITV took full advantage and moved Schools programmes to the morning only, between 9:30am and 12pm, the more permanent slot it became. The BBC were a bit more conservative about it and carried on with staggered and spread out programmes through the day.

Channel were not the only to keep the restrictions, Border and Grampian kept them for little while. A number of ITV stations did broadcast lunchtime shows at 1pm which meant there closed down earlier.

Yes, from 1972 schools on ITV were moved to mornings only, but some smaller regions did continue to start up later in the mornings for a while and move the first couple of schools programmes to the afternoon. Border and Channel come to mind (though I may be wrong there). This had something to do with the technician’s working hours and their trade unions, I’m sure. The 1973-74 fuel crisis may have had an influence too, as broadcasting hours were curtailed for a period.

My point merely being it took a while for all regions to settle into the new 9.30-noon scheduling pattern.

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Two countries and a Crown dependency, you mean.

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Going back a *very* long way, but in the 1950s the Scottish Home Service used to broadcast schools programmes on Whit Monday (seven weeks after Easter, as stated, the precursor of the current late May bank holiday), presumably because this was much less of a thing in Scotland and children would still be at school over it. An example here: http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbchomeservice/scottish/1955-05-30 (this was a year when Whit Monday was on the same day the current fixed holiday would be on).

I remember (perhaps about twenty years ago?) a report somewhere on what was described as the last area in Lancashire to have a Wakes Week school holiday changing to the standard holidays.

I'd have thought that for a lot of children at the time, the October half-term was a week for collecting wood and bonfire building (now alas much diminished).

apropos some earlier posts, I think it was probably the case that schools in the South were more likely to insist on only BBC schools programmes being watched and schools in the North more likely to concentrate on ITV schools programmes, though of course there would have been many exceptions.

Not sure about Channel, but Grampian and Border wouldn’t have been government restrictions, but rather financial self imposed restrictions

During most of the 50s the Scottish Home Service also networked these programmes to the N. Ireland Home Service.

Evidence please.