Bitesize didn’t exist when I was doing my GCSEs. My generation had to rely on a tall stack of textbooks covered with the scrawls of pupils who’d gone before. When it came to revision, you were very much at the mercy of your own handwritten notes stored chaotically (in my case) in hefty lever arch files. Bitesize changed all of that. Back when the world wide web was still very much in its infancy, it launched - initially as an TV programme then as a website; with the sole aim of making it much easier for young people to learn and revise.

Fast forward 20 years and Bitesize has gone from strength to strength, helping to educate generations of children across all four nations. Those first young people who used Bitesize to help them with their studies in 1998 are now well into their careers and it’s their children who are now our core audience. Around 80% of secondary school students and 40% of primary school students use it, making Bitesize the most popular dedicated educational site in the UK. Almost 100,000 students each year say that they wouldn’t have passed a subject if it wasn’t for Bitesize. And for everyone on the team, it is always incredibly rewarding to see the flow of ‘Bitesize saved my life’ tweets – particularly around exam season.

We’re hugely proud of all that’s been achieved over the past two decades but we’re very much focused on the future. This month sees the first iteration of a transformed Bitesize. We’re introducing a new look and improvements to the way the audience can find and use the content. For the first time, all students will be able to sign in, whatever their age, allowing us to start to build personalised learning journeys to help maximise attainment. Over the coming months, we’ll also be expanding our content provision – going beyond the curriculum for the first time to support young people with key life moments: preparing for the first day of school, coping with exam stress, choosing what options to go for and providing career inspiration and advice.

We want to make Bitesize work harder for our audience and do whatever we can to support them with all the challenges of growing up. If we get it right,  there will be plenty more Bitesize birthdays to celebrate in the future.

Sinead Rocks is Director of Education, BBC

• Learn more about BBC Bitesize at: https://www.bbc.com/bitesize

For the first time on mainstream national media, I have set up a day across BBC News to celebrate vocational qualifications. Let me explain why.

As a financial journalist I visit lots of different businesses. Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest problems they talk to me about is the skills gap.

I also spend a lot of time working with young people on careers. There’s a common problem: if a kid is not good at exams, they often think they are not skilled. Yet many of them do have the skills employers are looking for - but often we don't show them that, or teach them how to develop them, or celebrate them.

During a careers event I was hosting in my hometown Middlesbrough, I asked the forty 16-year-olds in front of me to write down what skills they thought they had. They didn’t write anything. I was devastated. Desperately clutching for something, I asked one of them what he had been doing at the weekend. His reply: "Well, not much, because I was working in a Chinese takeaway."

I was shocked he didn’t recognise his skills: "So you serve customers? You deal with the till? You help package up the food?" I bombarded him with questions.

"Yeah, of course," he replied, looking at me like I was mad.

"Well get writing them down," I shouted.

"But I don’t want to work in a Chinese takeaway for the rest of my life so I don’t see how it’s relevant," he shouted back.

It turned out that everyone in the room had part-time jobs, or were carers or mentors, or played sports, or had another interesting hobby, but they didn’t know that those experiences also gave them transferable skills to help make them employable in lots of areas. They thought skills were just academic things, like being good at algebra.

We are not making young people value what they are good at. I appreciate this is a sweeping generalisation and there are some great initiatives and wonderful teachers and schools out there who are doing this.

But it’s not happening enough and I personally feel schools, on the whole, are creating exam monsters. I don’t blame teachers, they are judged on exam performance. And as a society we feed that by constantly focusing on academic results. But they’re not the whole story when it comes to being employable and valued.

Why as a society can’t we celebrate people who are skilled practically? Or people who are good with people? We see things as being soft skills. Well in my line of work being good with people is the most important skill I need and there is nothing soft about it.

If someone chooses a vocational route, why do they not get the same respect in society as someone who just does a pure academic route? Why do we celebrate A-Level results but not BTEC or City and Guilds or NVQs results?

The 1.5 million people who did A-Levels last year got a day of national media coverage, but what about the 3.8 million people who took vocational qualifications? This is why I pushed for BBC News to do that today.

I believe there should be parity of esteem for whichever route you choose. Some people I went to school with were written off as being thick by the education system yet they are now highly successful tradespeople and business leaders.

I was applauded because I was the school swot. I was an exam monster. I was that kid who opened her A-Level results on the local BBC news. But that is not the reason why I think I am successful. It’s because, through my school, I had direct links with industry.

From a young age I had a real sense of the world of work. This is what vocational education gives you. You learn about jobs by doing them and then the theory relates directly to it. But yet, this type of training is viewed by many in society as inferior.

The most rewarding, insightful and challenging year of my life was my 'Year in Industry' working as a trainee engineer at Black & Decker, which involved studying part time at college. I went to university after this, but only because I felt I had to, so that society would judge me as ‘clever’.

I am not criticising people who work hard for their degrees, I just wish we would give the same respect to people who choose the vocational route. Also not all vocational courses are brilliant, but there are a lot that are.

The media has an important role in helping change the perception about education. Despite covering many huge news stories for the BBC, I think celebrating vocational education will be the thing I am most proud of.

Ofcom published a report last week about UK media consumption.

It tells a now familiar tale of the continued rise of on demand digital, especially among the young, accelerated by powerful internet companies.

If you take audiences as a whole most of their time spent watching and listening is to broadcast TV (71%) and live radio (75%).

For 15-24s the figures are 46% for TV and 36% for radio.

What should traditional broadcasters do to remain relevant to all audiences and especially younger ones?

Announcing the report, Ofcom Chief Exec Sharon White said UK broadcasters “have a history of adapting to change. By making the best British programmes and working together to reach people who are turning away from TV, our broadcasters can compete in the digital age.”

That’s true. The British creative industries need to collaborate to compete.

Netflix was described in the FT last week: "[Netflix] doesn't want to be a leader in video, or even the leader in video - it wants to monopolise the consumption of video; to become TV."

Monopolisation plays no part in the BBC’s mission. We’re proud that the iPlayer helped create the video-on-demand market - with space for other PSBs to have their own players.

We do want to serve everyone – the BBC is owned by all of us so we feel a moral duty to do that. A lot of that’s about entertainment (which has always been part of our mission).

Radio One’s Greg James and Grimmy hit the spot with their inspired game of hide and seek last week. As schools broke up it was an end of term prank that perfectly captured the mood of its audience.

But we’re matching other teenage mindsets and needs in really distinctive ways too. We’re commissioning a range of new content for 13-15 year olds which offers insights into teenage lives, gives them a platform to express their thoughts on sex education, relationships and parents.

We’re expanding BBC Bitesize beyond exam revision into helping students with career orientation or emotional skills like resilience.

And we’ve launched BBC iReporter, an online interactive game to help young people in the UK identify ‘fake news.’

That’s how we can serve everyone without being a monopoly – by making a difference. A difference to your day – with that show or prank that makes your day. A difference to you as an individual, whether by helping you pass your exams or discovering a lifelong passion for classical music. Or a difference to society by combating fake news or disinformation.

As summer kicks in, teachers and their pupils will be getting a well-earned break. Things aren’t quite so quiet for the BBC’s education team, though.

We’re preparing to support students when they get their exam results in August, finalising some improvements to Bitesize in time for the new academic year, and stocking up on new curriculum-linked programming for use in the classroom on BBC Teach.

We’re also making progress on the development work we announced a few months ago when we set out our new vision for education at the BBC. It’s all about increasing the impact of our educational content by exploring, in partnership with others, what more we could do to encourage social mobility across the UK.

We’re particularly focused on two key areas:

• improving literacy rates by reducing the language gap that kicks in before children even start school. According to the Sutton Trust, by the age of five the UK's most disadvantaged children can be 19 months behind their more affluent peers in vocabulary development and this deficit can have life-long consequences
• championing the wider needs of children and young people by expanding Bitesize beyond just curriculum support so that it includes career inspiration and discovery, content that builds resilience and self-esteem, encourages critical thinking and provides opportunities for personal development

We’ve been delighted by the support we have received from other organisations who want to work collaboratively with us as we develop our thinking and our plans. From the off, we’ve known that partnerships will be key to making a lasting difference.

With the help of the National Literacy Trust, we've set up a Language Advisory Group, made up of a range of early years language and communication experts including Lucid, Ican, The Communication Trust and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. Together, we’re exploring the messages, material and action most likely to give every child the language and communications skills to start school on the same page.

With Bitesize, we’re adopting a twin track approach to its transformation. It’s already a much loved service for five-16 year olds seeking out support for their study, revision and homework. But some of its technology is outdated and it can be a frustrating experience at times and so our first task is to change that. Our audience can expect to see the first fruits of that labour when the new academic year kicks in.

Alongside that, we’ve begun to commission and produce material that goes beyond the curriculum. Our partnership with the CBI has been crucial in this area, and we’re working alongside the likes of The Careers & Enterprise Company, the Gatsby Foundation and others to develop content that will bridge the gap between education and employment. We want to inspire young people, to help them make informed choices about potential careers, and then support them as they strive to reach their potential.

Our overall goal is to make Bitesize work harder for our audience. It has supported the curriculum needs of students for close to 20 years, but we want it to also be there for other key life moments – preparing for your first day at primary school, making the move up to secondary, dealing with exam stress and the more general pressures that come with growing up – all the way through to preparing for the world of work and figuring out what to do if you don’t get the results you need.

Education is a core part of the BBC’s overall mission and we believe that these new initiatives have the potential to make a significant impact, at a time when it has arguably never been more important.

In an age when education is widely recognised to be the most significant element in determining life chances; we’ve been considering how the BBC can ensure that everything we do in this space is as impactful as possible.

Our overall mission is to inform, educate and entertain and we take the education part very seriously: we already deliver a range of programmes and services that promote and support learning for all ages.

This includes CBeebies with its support for the early years framework, Bitesize which provides study and revision support for children across the UK; BBC Teach for inspirational classroom learning; major educational campaigns such as the BBC micro:bit and Super Movers working in partnership to tackle defined societal needs; as well as extensive specialist factual programming that engages millions of people week on week.

We’re not as well known for educating as we are for informing and entertaining so we’ve been thinking about how what we do for education could have more impact. We want to renew our commitment to education for the benefit of our audiences and the UK as a whole. Over the past year, we’ve consulted a wide range of major organisations to identify key priorities that we will explore in partnership.

Our first priority is to improve the UK’s literacy rates amongst pre-school children.

It’s fair to say that the UK has a problem with social mobility; in fact it’s worse than in most of the developed world and extensive research suggests that poor literacy is a key contributing factor. By the age of five, the UK's most disadvantaged children can be 19 months behind their more affluent peers in vocabulary development (according to Sutton Trust, 2012).

We want to do something about this. And so, alongside the National Literacy Trust, we’re inviting others to join us in an unprecedented multi-year campaign that seeks to close the language gap that kicks in even before children start school. If we can get others to support us, we’ll make under 5s language and literacy a key BBC priority and focus our educational efforts, content and marketing in this area, highlighting to new parents the importance of talking, singing and reading to their child from birth.

But what the BBC can do is only one part of the solution. We’ll also need boots on the ground, the expertise of those already on the front line and the support of a range of other organisations if we are to truly make a sustainable change. It’s a massive challenge, but one we feel worth taking on as if we can tackle it, the benefits to young people in the UK will be huge.

Our second priority is to champion the wider needs of children by building resilience and self-esteem.

We want to do more to help children and young people during their school years and beyond. Bitesize already helps most students to study better; the curriculum support it provides benefits around 80% of teenagers across the UK but we think it can do more.

We want to build on it to support the other challenges our audiences face during these formative years – inspiring curiosity and critical thinking, building resilience and self-esteem; supporting their mental health just as much as we support their academic needs.

Our third priority is to open up the world of employment to young people.

Recent research by the CBI has revealed that 84% of UK businesses feel the quality of careers advice young people receive is not good enough. We want to open up the world of employment; empowering young people to make informed choices about their future and putting them in control.

Working closely with the CBI and other organisations, we will build on Bitesize to help young people prepare for the world of work – bridging the gap between education and employment and shining a spotlight on the changing nature of jobs. We’ll support vocational training as well – focusing in particular on the skills the UK needs most.

Our final priority is to make it easier for adults to retrain; equipping them to thrive in a changing labour market and an increasingly digital world.

And as we build on the links between education and prosperity, we will explore with our partners in the Open University, opportunities to do more for adults too. We are keen to find out if the BBC is able to play a role in providing people with the tools to adapt to a changing world and a changing workforce. We don’t have the answers to that just yet – but we want to know if the lessons we learn through expanding Bitesize can help us find them.

It’s early days for all of these potential new initiatives but we’re sharing them to see if others want to join us as we move forward into the next phase of development, exploring these priorities in more detail and building the propositions. We firmly believe that by joining up our efforts and by working in partnership, we will be able to do so much more to impact on the lives.

Sinead Rocks is Director of Education, BBC

• Read the press release on the media centre

The BBC micro:bit website has been created as a one-stop shop to introduce teachers, parents and students to all aspects of the micro:bit. Anyone can have a go, write code, and see how it would play back on the BBC micro:bit online simulator. This initial beta release focuses first on giving teachers and educators the information and inspiration that they need to start to plan how they’ll use the BBC micro:bit with their students. We’ll be updating the site over the next few months as new resources are added, and as we build up to the micro:bit arriving in schools, classrooms and homes.

Let me outline some of the resources that have gone live today.

Getting Started

The new BBC micro:bit beta site is the place for teachers, students and parents/guardians who are new to coding and the BBC micro:bit to get started. In the first instance, watch some short videos that offer inspiring ideas for using the BBC micro:bit, and get introduced to the different code editors. 

Learning Resources

Our amazing partners are producing an abundance of resources to kick-start students and support teachers and parents on their BBC micro:bit adventure. There are exciting projects to remix and download, step-by-step interactive tutorials and lessons plans, and detailed information on each coding editor. Explore some examples on the BBC micro:bit homepage from partners such as Microsoft, Kitronic, Technology Will Save Us and Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Create code for the micro:bit

Select “Create Code” to choose an editor and start writing code for the BBC micro:bit.
This week we’re releasing the Microsoft Block and Microsoft Touch Develop editors. Coming very soon is the Code Kingdoms JavaScript editor, followed by a Python editor from the Python Software Foundation.

Run your script on the Simulator
Once you’ve written a code script, select “Run” from within the editor to run it on our online simulator. Light up the LEDs, make some virtual button presses and spin the compass dial! It’s a great way to test how your code’s working before transferring it to a BBC micro:bit – and a helpful tool for teachers ahead of the delivery of the devices themselves.

Teacher registration

From today, teachers and other educators will be able to register on the website, enabling them to

• Save and retrieve their content (via their login)
• Compile code scripts (into a format ready to transfer to a micro:bit device)
• Publish code scripts (to share with other micro:bit website users)

If you’re a teacher and haven’t yet registered your school to receive BBC micro:bits and website registration codes, please do so using our online registration form. You can read more about the device delivery plans in Sinead Rocks’ blog post.

What’s next?

We’re in Beta, whilst we complete our testing and add some more features and enhancements. We’d welcome your feedback, either via the comments below or to microbitsupport@bbc.co.uk, to inform our next stage of development.

Over the next couple of months, we’ll be focussing more on the experience for the Year 7 children or equivalent who will be receiving BBC micro:bits. These students will then be able to register to use the website, via their teachers, closer to the time that micro:bits will start arriving in schools.

I’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank our key collaborators for this website launch:

- the Microsoft Touch Develop team, who have led with us on the development of the website and web services. They have designed and developed the web application and editor environment, based on their Touch Develop platform, as well as the Microsoft Block Editor and Microsoft Touch Develop Editor.

• Tangent Design, who have designed and built the top-level website, in collaboration with the BBC and Microsoft
• Code Kingdoms and The Python Software Foundation, whose editors will follow shortly
• ARM, who provide the code compilation service
• Lancaster University, who have written the Runtime: the firmware that specifies the micro:bit functions that the editors can write to
• Our Learning Resource providers and champions – listed on our Partners page

Leigh Aspin is Executive Product Manager, Knowledge and Learning 

The new Bitesize site brings together in one place all the BBC’s formal education content - not just the familiar Bitesize learner guides covering all the main secondary subjects, but also new primary guides and thousands of curriculum-mapped video clips for both secondary and primary classrooms.

Built on the latest technology, the new site is better designed, easier to use and easier to update. It will also work as well, if not better, on mobiles and tablets than it does on desktop and laptop computers, so you’ll be able to take Bitesize with you wherever you go and learn on the move.

The new Bitesize is now up and running with around 7,000 classroom clips in place – re-encoded at considerably higher quality. Also in place are most of the Secondary guides covering Key Stages 3 and 4 of the National Curriculum, and National 4, 5 and Highers in the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence.

You’ll also find the first of our new primary guides, supporting the new Computing curriculum at KS1 and KS2, as well as Computer Science content across all secondary levels.

All the content has been updated to bring it into line with recent curriculum changes, and you can now navigate much more easily - by Nation, by level (Key stage 3, National 4 etc) or by subject - to the topic you need. You’ll also find a much greater range of links to other online study support resources.

Migrating and transforming all our existing education content has been a huge undertaking, but we’re now racing to finish the job. Expect to see many more primary and secondary guides, plus new rich media, interactives and ‘personalisation’ features added to the site over the next 12 months.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for KS3 or GCSE content that we’ve not yet migrated to the new site, don't worry. It will still be available in its old location until we move it, and putting the level and subject you're looking for into a search engine should take you straight to it. If you have subjects from the old Bitesize site bookmarked in your browser, these bookmarks will still work, redirecting you to the new content if it’s already been moved.

We know that while we’re still in transition from old to new Bitesize there’ll be some rough edges and imperfections in the new product, but we will continually improve it. I hope you will tell us what you think using the feedback button on the new site’s banner, so that we can fix any problems. Once all BBC education content has settled into its new home, we’re certain our offer to school-based learners will be massively improved.

John Millner is Executive Producer, BBC Knowledge and Learning.

• Read more about the new BBC Computing resources
• Visit the BBC Bitesize website
• Read more blogs about BBC Learning from John Millner

In BBC Learning, we have always provided content that is relevant to the UK curricula through sites such as BBC Bitesize. We spend a lot of time talking to teachers and other education professionals and we know that the new computing curriculum will be a challenge for some. But we also know that many children are genuinely interested in technology.

So today, we have launched a brand new range of content to meet the needs of both. Using interactivity, animation and video, we’ve brought the subject to life with the key aim of enabling children to build their digital skills whilst also inspiring them to find out more. 

You can find it all here

At Primary level, we have more than 40 new guides covering all aspects of computing. For instance, at key stage 1, we have created content to help teachers and parents explain the concept of coding to young children and show how it can be used to create games and animations.

Higher up the age ranges, we have focused on providing guides for independent study. For example, at key stage 3, we’ve created material to help students understand that computational thinking isn’t just relevant to coding, it can also provide a basis of logical thinking that can be applied to any field of study.

Combined with great television output from CBBC and CBeebies in the Autumn, this means that the BBC can inspire children to get creative digitally both within the formal setting of the classroom and at home through television, games and competitions. These early examples form part of the BBC’s coding and digital creativity initiative for 2015. More detail on this initiative will be announced soon.

Changes to Bitesize 

The new academic year isn’t just about new content for us. It’s also about making some changes to how we bring that content to our audiences. In the past, Bitesize has mainly been a destination for key stage 3 and GCSE students, featuring study guides, quizzes, videos and games. And we’ve had a number of other websites aimed at supporting students and schools across the UK.

Today, however, we are beginning to bring all our formal education resources together under the Bitesize brand. Here, all content will be mapped to the relevant part of the curriculum by key stage, topic and nation, with improved navigation throughout. Given the rise of smart phones and tablets, we recognize the importance of supporting learning, wherever and whenever so the new Bitesize is designed to be fully responsive. This means it will work seamlessly on tablets and smart phones as well as on desktop PCs and whiteboards.

We also want to help our audience continue their learning beyond the BBC. We have worked with other educational providers to ensure there are links from our pages to theirs – enabling audiences to access a wide range of material from almost 60 other providers.

Although we intend to implement these changes with minimal disruption, it has been a big undertaking. We now have over 1000 study guides and quizzes, some 5000 infographics and over 7000 thousand class clips in the new Bitesize. However, that’s just two thirds of what we had in the old site so there is still work to be done, particularly to bring our content for primary level into the new site. 

BBC iWonder 

Of course, the BBC’s commitment to education online isn’t just about the curriculum. At the beginning of this year we introduced iWonder, a new factual and educational format aimed at stimulating curiosity and providing learning opportunities for mainstream audiences.

Initially launched to support the BBC’s World War 1 season, we now have iWonder guides and timelines that span all our factual genres from Science to Food and from Religion to Natural History. The iWonder tag line is ‘be curious’ so do take a look. 

I hope that you find our new content useful and enjoyable, it would be great to hear what you think.

Sinead Rocks is Acting Head of BBC Learning.

• See what changes have bee made to the BBC Bitesize website
• Read the press release about BBC Bitesize on the Media Centre website
• Read more about the 'Kid's coding push' on the BBC News site

Today sees the culmination of a project we've been running with schools across the North of England called 'Dragons' Den Goes Back to School'. Inspired by some work the team at Waterloo Road and BBC Outreach did last year where schools wrote and filmed their own episodes of the drama, we have spent the last few months working in our own way with students from Sunderland, Bolton, Lincoln and Bradford. By using the power of the Dragons' Den brand we've been trying to encourage the next generation of British entrepreneurs by giving Year 10 pupils a unique opportunity to pitch a business idea to the fearsome Dragons.

Each of the schools were personally set a business challenge by the Dragons - a particular market or sector that they wanted the students to tap into and work out a way of exploiting financially. The aspiring young entrepreneurs then spent a couple of months developing their idea, under the mentorship of some of my wonderful (and hard-working!) Dragons' Den team.

On the day of filming, I have to say I was worried. Having seen around 400 entrepreneurs walk up those few but intimidating Den stairs, and seen dozens of those go to pieces (a totally understandable reaction by the way, I dread to think what I'd be like!), the parent in me was desperately trying to think of ways to protect them. In the end, the best way was to ensure my team gave them as much information and training as possible about what it might be like, trust that their fantastic teachers would do the same, and then find a sofa to put in the gallery and hide behind!

To their absolute credit, the students who pitched to the Dragons did a spectacular job. Each of the four pitches were either educative, informative or entertaining (recognise those values from anywhere?), and in most cases, were all three. And although one school did falter slightly during their pitch (I did have to calm our director down who instinctively was going in for the big close-up at that point!), those students had such a good business proposition and were so clued up on what it was about, that the Dragons instantly forgave them their stuttering start.

In a change to the usual format, the young entrepreneurs didn't find out which of the Dragons may have been 'in' or 'out' on the day, because that is what tonight is about. All the pupils and the teachers who have committed so much time to the project, will come to the BBC's new home in the north - MediaCityUK in Salford - to see an edited version of their pitches, and find out what our five influential business leaders thought of their ideas.

There's also the small matter of having two awards up for grabs. The Dragons will be presenting one for best pitch and one for best idea. But really what is important is that as well as producing what will hopefully be a hugely successful 9th series of Dragons' Den, we are able to take advantage of those assets that we have here in BBC North, in order to give potential entrepreneurs of tomorrow an opportunity that will hopefully shape their perspective on what it takes to succeed. How many students can boast on their CV that they have pitched to five of Britain's most successful business leaders, and lived to tell the tale?

Aside from this project, it's been a big year for us on Dragons' Den. Not only were we successful in getting a three series deal, (thanks both to Janice Hadlow - Controller, BBC TWO and Mark Linsey - Controller, Entertainment Commissioning), but we also have a new Dragon for this series - Bolton-born Hilary Devey. She has certainly put her individual stamp on the Den, as this year's entrepreneurs will no doubt attest, and I'm certain our viewers will welcome her addition.

Finally then, back to tonight. Working on one of BBC Entertainment North's longest running shows is a privilege in itself, but having the opportunity to experience at first hand, the impact that the show has, in this instance on some of our younger audience, is a real treat. I just hope they think that we've given them a bit of a treat in return.

Sam Lewens is Executive Producer of Dragons' Den

• Dragons' Den Goes Back to School is a collaboration between Dragons' Den and BBC North. The project aims to help develop entrepreneurial skills from initial idea, through planning, budgeting and marketing all the way to pitching for investment. The schools' pitches were for educational purposes, not for actual investment and will not be shown on network television.
• The picture shows Lincoln Castle Academy in the Dragons' Den with Dragons (L-R) Duncan Bannatyne, Hilary Devey, Theo Paphitis, Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones.
• There's always more news and information on the BBC North web site and on the BBC Outreach web site.