Leigh Holmwood. guardian.co.uk, Wednesday February 27 2008
The BBC has proposed replacing its axed digital education offering BBC Jam by "enhancing" its existing portfolio of services with new skills-based online educational initiatives. BBC Jam was closed in March last year by the BBC Trust with the loss of 200 jobs following concerns raised by the European Commission about its commercial impact. The corporation's management has spent the past year developing proposals for a replacement online education service.
These proposals would meet the corporation's educational purpose for children and young people by "enhancing its existing portfolio with some new online educational initiatives which are skills based", the BBC said. The BBC Trust said it had not received the full proposals or their costings - but once they had been "developed in more detail" it would submit them to a public value test later this year, which will include a market impact assessment by Ofcom. "Education has always been at the heart of the BBC's mission and promoting education and learning is one of the BBC's six public purposes," the trust added. "The trust's own research last year underlined that education and learning is seen by audiences, particularly those with children, as core to the BBC's remit. "This way forward reflects the shared view of the trust and the executive board that even a modified version of BBC Jam based around delivery of the curriculum is not deliverable given the regulatory constraints and ongoing commercial concerns." The BBC Trust decided at a meeting in January that BBC Jam should remain suspended and formally close when its service licence expires on September 30 this year.
At the trust's request, BBC management is now undertaking a post-investment review of the BBC Jam closure and is "taking all reasonable steps to mitigate the financial losses which are an inevitable and unavoidable consequence of the decision to close the service". "We will report publicly the final cost to the public of decommissioning BBC Jam once this review is complete," the trust said.
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