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DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER
37
schools of the type and containing children of the age for which the series is planned). The schools in this sample are circularised with a questionnaire designed to bring in the required information. The Council has no official "right" to ask for information from schools, and it is therefore an entirely voluntary gesture on the part of the teacher to fill in and return this questionnaire. In the last few years teachers have been spending a notorious amount of time filling in forms. They have nevertheless been most generous in their response to these circularisations. For the !0 "postal surveys" made by the Council in 1945 the returns were in most cases 80 per cent or more of the sample. From these returns it is possible to draw conclusions concerning the whole potential audience within a known degree of probability. An example will serve to show the kind of background picture for school broadcasting which the postal survey helps to create. A survey was made to examine the use of the Geography series of 1944 45. This series was planned for children of about 13 in what were then called elementary schools. The sample of schools included all types of elementary school with children of 13, but no grammar schools. The following is a brief summary of the results. It was calculated that the most probable number of schools using the series in the potential audience of 7,200 ivas about 4,000, with about 40 per cent of these istening regularly. The number of children istening was in the region of 150,000 and these
were distributed fairly evenly over all three years of the senior age-range, i.e. 11 plus to 13 plus, and organised mostly in classes of mixed intelligence. The Geography syllabus for any one school was as likely to deal with any one part of the world as any other at any point of the senior age-range and likely, too, to cover two or more continents in a single year. The Geography teaching (including the use of the broadcast) took place as a rule within 80 minutes a week. It follows that a Geography series on any particular region of the world might find (as far as the choice is dictated by subject matter) an audience anywhere between the first and third years of the secondary modern school and in the corresponding part of the unreorganised school. As may be seen from the evidence, the Geographyseries for 1944 45 did in fact find an audience of this wide age-range. It would therefore seem that two courses lie open: either to emphasise to teachers, that although younger children may listen, the broadcasts are planned to suit the needs of 1 3-year-olds or to attempt to plan broadcasts suitable for all children between 1 1 plus and 13 plus. It is known from much experience that a series intended specially for 13-year-olds must be designed and presented differently from one intended for the whole senior age-range. The latter is less easy to provide. The differences in outlook and intellectual capacity of the listening classes must be kept in mind from the earliest stages of making a broadcast. Here is perhaps a point for
film makers to consider. Though the teaching film is a more expensive and less flexible instrument than the school broadcast, close investigation into the suitability of teaching films may show a similar need for fine adjustments to age level.
The development of these methods of collecting evidence has, as I mentioned earlier, been limited by the war. But it is hoped by this method of sampling to build a large-scale picture of the listening habits of the audience, which as far as it is possible to find out, shall be reasonably accurate. This picture is confined to certain background details of fact which can be investigated by post and is always a little out of date. There have still to be devised means of forecasting and striking a balance between the needs of sections of the audience during the period of change foreshadowed by the Education Act. Ad hoc study in the classroom by teachers and officials already provides lively information for those making the broadcasts, and offers an interesting field for further development, and there are possibilities, so far little explored, of detached research under controlled conditions which it is hoped may before long be conducted, perhaps in universities. But whatever may be the future growth of research in the field of school broadcasting, it cannot be emphasised too strongly that there is one essential on which depends the whole structure — the active co-operation of the teaching profession. This will be true as well for research into teaching films.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF FILMS PRODUCED BY THE M.O.I. IN 1945
FOOTAGE OF FILMS
1940(«) 1941 1942 1943
1444
1945
Five-minute Fifteen-minute General T Distribution General NT Distribution Instructional and Training Mainly Overseas Wholly Overseas Trailers
Total
Colonial Film Unit(rf)
Acquired 5-minuteand 15-minute films
13,791
25,113
20.141
—
—
—
59,045
—
1,316
15,216
16.041
14.832
47,405
16,673
9.228
22,506
33,833
17,524
31,165
130,929
23,545
7,890
41,457
24,010
39,572
55,216
191,690
4,109
10,280
30,552
38,568
18,713
17,850
120,072
16,383
15,081
5,908
6,179
43,551
3,100
1 1 ,093
22,944
43,115
17,307
8,413
105,972
1,600
3,000(6)
4,2500?)
5.750(c)
5.500(c)
4,625
20,100
62,818
66,604
159,519
175,613
120,565
138,280
723,399
11,919
7,836
13,600
13,198
17.844
33,107
97,504
1,135
6,657
11,353
,312
887
21,344
(«) Includes 3,130 ft. of T. Releases delivered in 1939. (b) Average length— 200 ft.
(d) 16 mm. productions calculated at equivalent 35 mm. length.
NUMBER OF FILMS
1940(a) 1941 1942 1943
(c) Average length — 125 ft.
1944
1945
Total
Five-minute Fifteen-minute General T Distribution General NT Distribution Instructional and Training Mainly Overseas Wholly Overseas Trailers
Total
Colonial Film Unit
Acquired 5-minute and 15-minute films
20
37
29
—
—
—
86
—
1
12
12
12
37
14
5
7
8
5
8
47
23
7
35
21
28
39
153
6
12
24
27
13
12
94
12
7
6
2
27
3
10
18
39
15
6
91
8
15
34
46
51
37
191
74
86
160
160
130
116
762
8
10
16(6)
30(b)
36(b)
30(6)
130
10
(<i) Includes 2 films for T release delivered in 1939.
(h) Including productions in 16 mm.