“What the culture secretary was here to see could well be a glimpse of the education system of the future.”
BBC reporter Allen Sinclair did not know just how prophetic his comments on a remote learning program piloted in a Reading school would be when he made them in 1998.
Culture Secretary Chris Smith visited Surley Row in April that year to see a Highdown School pioneering technology which linked home computers to the school’s network – 22 years before the studying from home became crucial during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Multimedia, encyclopaedia, it’s all on this internet; email, all sorts of thing,” one pupil told BBC South Today in archive footage released by the news outlet.
The footage, which can be viewed at BBC Rewind, is one of more than 30,000 videos released by the BBC dating back to the 1940’s.
“It enables me to work from home, do the school work and if necessary contact the teacher for help and sometimes even send homework to him rather than taking it into class,” another student said in the footage.
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The school’s pilot program connected 50 homes to the school network, a local library and a museum.
Chris Smith told the BBC: “This is a school that’s very much at the forefront of the use of new technology in order to improve learning opportunities for pupils, I very much hope we’re going to see this happening in a lot more schools over the next few years.”
Fast-forward to 2020, and 87 per cent of parents surveyed by the Office for National Statistics said their child had been home-schooled between May and June due to coronavirus.
Mr Sinclair signs off the news piece by calling Highdown “the school of the future:” How right he was.
As part of its centenary celebrations the BBC launched ‘BBC Rewind’ across the UK.
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This is the largest release of digital archive content in BBC history, categorised by the nations and regions of the UK and containing many emotional and powerful stories, many of which have not been viewed since their original broadcast.
“As we celebrate 100 years of the BBC, we’re opening up our unique and deeply valuable archive, an important part of the nation’s collective memory,” said James Stirling, Executive Editor of BBC 100.
“By breathing new life into stories which have laid dormant for years, audiences will be able to discover recordings which can help us all learn more about who we are and where we’re from.”
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