Swiss discover educational television is not child’s play

Robert Ruoff (right) says Switzerland should be producing more educational television programmes swissinfo.ch

Television producers have been debating the future of education on the small screen at a joint Swiss-German festival.

The 39th Festival on Educational Television and Multimedia, hosted by the German city of Karlsruhe and sponsored by the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), brought together participants from as far away as Japan, Moldavia and Estonia.

Robert Ruoff, director of education at SBC and general manager of the festival, told swissinfo that Switzerland has been at the organisational helm of the festival for nearly four decades.

“When we started back in 1962, the festival was a training seminar for about 35-40 producers in educational television, whereas now it attracts well over 100 participants,” he said.

A highlight of the four-day festival is the ceremony to reward the year’s best schools and adult education programmes, as chosen by a specially invited jury of Swiss and international broadcasters and teachers.

Chris Jelley, a British television producer who served as president of the competition jury, says the festival is an annual opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with producers from other countries.

“People who make educational television across Europe are quite thin in numbers, so this is a great place to share views and opinions,” Jelley told swissinfo.

Pan-European programmes

Though Jelley admits a Swiss child is unlikely to have identical programme tastes to his or her counterpart elsewhere in Europe, he believes there are ways of giving educational television a pan-European flavour.

Jelley points to the winner of the 2001 award for Best Schools Programme, a short Japanese film entitled “My Life as an Ant”.

“It’s about a day in the life of an ant and unfortunately ants are in virtually every country, so it’s something children all over Europe have experience of,” he said.

“It is an outstandingly good film, with terrific close-up photography and a very entertaining commentary – but a commentary which would clearly mean nothing to a German-speaking Swiss child.

“Change the commentary, however, and you have something which can interest children all over Europe.”

Praiseworthy production

Switzerland’s own contribution to the festival, a documentary programme designed for use in schools entitled “The Risk of Science”, was also singled out for praise by the jury president.

“It was a thorough, investigative documentary which put the pros and cons of science in a very perceptive manner,” Jelley said.

Though Switzerland’s entry in the competition was warmly received at the festival, Ruoff warns that budget constraints mean less money is now being spent on homegrown educational television.

“The annual budget at SBC for educational television is in the region of SFr1.8 million,” Ruoff said.

“Compare this with the equivalent of something like SFr50 million earmarked for educational programmes in Holland.”

Ruoff says cutbacks have led to the complete withdrawal of educational programmes from the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland. In the French-speaking part of the country, schools programmes are now aired exclusively over the Internet.

In German-speaking Switzerland, the public broadcaster airs two hours of schools and adult education programmes each week.

Specific Swiss approach

“We would like to produce more, because there is a specific Swiss approach to educational matters,” Ruoff commented.

“What we need to do is buy programmes from, say, the BBC, and then follow these up with [home-produced] discussion programmes, which is where we would try to get the Swiss angle,” he added.

Ruoff admits Switzerland is unlikely ever to lead the way in the worldwide production of educational television, but says it could try harder to export its technical expertise.

“At this year’s festival, for example, we heard a joint presentation from IBM and a Swiss company, Fantastic, on a means of distributing audio-visual material for schools on broadband,” he said.

“Of course, when we talk about ‘reaching the audience’ we are often referring to programme content, but it can also have the meaning of how programmes are technically brought to the users, so Switzerland could really develop projects in this direction.”

by Ramsey Zarifeh