BBC Jam….good news for…..who?

Posted on | March 16, 2007 | 2 Comments

“Good news for British educational publishers.”

That is the reaction to the suspension of the BBC Jam programme from Richard Charkin, CEO of Macmillan, in his blog (good to see a CEO blogging, despite the content in this case).

He goes on to say: “Britain leads the world in e-learning and this can become a significant export market apart from its benefits within the UK provided the publishing is driven by competition and student and teacher satisfaction.”

And then: “The volte face has been achieved by a very long period of argumentation by a number of groups but I want to highlight the role of the the Educational Publishers Council of the Publishers Association.”

I commented on his blog post: ” ‘Good news for British educational publishers’ – but sod the kids who will benefit from BBC Jam. Good to know where your priorities lie!”

His response? “John, I happen to believe that students benefit from competition between publishers and that monopolistic, Government-funded educational structures rarely work. So it’s not sod the kids, it’s cheers for the kids.”

Two attempts by me at a further rejoinder disappeared into the ether, so I’ll make my response here:

“Richard – you and I both know that BBC Jam could not be described as monopolistic in any reasonable definition of that term.

In any case, to assert that “monopolistic, Government-funded educational structures rarely work” is simply nonsense. I worked for 26 years in a “monopolistic, Government-funded educational structure” (namely, Scottish education) and that worked (and works) very well indeed, thank you. The private sector could not compete with what was achieved for its stakeholders on a daily basis by that particular government-funded educational structure!

On a different scale, BBC Jam has the potential to benefit young learners across the four home countries in a way that genuinely complements the offerings by you and your colleagues across the industry.

All in all, you really will have to do better than this to excuse the rampant self-interest at play here.”

And to pick up on a point made by Theo Kuechel commenting on the same blog post (and on mine), I do not remember the educational publishers squealing at the £555m allocated to date for the eLearning Credits since they were introduced by the DfES!!

Distorting the market is evidently in the eye of the beholder.

Technorati Tags: bbc jam, publishers association, richard charkin

Category: business, education

Comments

2 Responses to “BBC Jam….good news for…..who?”

mariano
March 19th, 2007 @ 11:11 pm

John, i couldnt agree more with you.. even from argentina (where i live) i consider this decision totally wrong and the richard Charkin´s take on this is quite embarassing.

You have no idea the power the BBC and its educational initiates have in other countries where the elements of elearning are expensive or inexistant… and having this kind of initiatives helps a lot of people that McMillan and the other publishers that complained to the EU wont understand.
Trevor
March 20th, 2007 @ 1:58 am

Being from Australia and a strong believer that Britain leads the world in e-learning; I have to wonder how the closure of such a resource is possible. I would have liked the opportunity to log in and view some of the content, why was such an investment made only to shut it down? It appears that 170,000 users don”t carry much of a voice as to the future of e-learning, “Cheers for the kids”