Toffa Schools

Logo as of January 2020

**Toffa Schools** is an educational television service that launched on 3 September 2018 as set up by Toffa; broadcasting learning programmes for children ages 4 to 18. Unlike the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 counterparts, Toffa Schools was split into two different programming strands taking up six hours of airtime on weekdays from 9:00am to 3:00pm. Primary school programming was aimed for children aged 4 to 10 with secondary schools programming aimed at older children and teenagers aged 11 to 18.

## History

### Beginnings and development

By 2018, Toffa's daytime schedule had become somewhat of a mess. The range of cheap programming was deemed not fitting for daytime and some could've worked well for primetime, if not for the weekends. To combat this, Toffa chairman Riley Indigo devised a way to make Toffa seem more of a mainstream channel than it just being entertainment-based. This didn't necessarily mean that all the daytime programmes were axed, but would air during the summer break and perhaps with a higher budget along with the odd possibility of airing in the afternoons should it work.

As for the idea, Indigo suggested to bring in more educational programming to the channel, and even more so given that educational programming (specifically for younger audiences) had disappeared for almost a decade, with it only being shown in some capacity on S4C by this point. The year was also proven to be somewhat of a mixed bag for the channel, so Indigo also hoped that along with bringing in educational programming to daytime, Autumn 2018 could be a soft reboot for the channel; even more so as it would mark the 15th anniversary since it launched in 2003. The idea was concluded by being a strand that would replace the entire six-hours of daytime fodder that Toffa had for many years (for much of the year at least): Toffa Schools. It was split into two with the first three hours dedicated to primary school students, and the other half for secondary school students.

Conceived in April, the one issue with filling six hours was that a large range of programming would be almost planned and commissioned immediately; especially as Toffa couldn't risk doing the entire thing alone. The solution was for at least 60% of its programming to be produced by other broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV with Toffa sorting out the other 40%. They had at least four months to get a number of programming pitched, commissioned, filmed and edited ready in time for September 2018. Thankfully, production on the range of programming went smoothly with a reported 57 different programmes from all broadcasters including Toffa and was insisted for more commissioned for at least July 2019 depending on whether the strand was successful or not, making this a big gamble.

Primary schools programming on Toffa were generally between ten and twenty minutes in length. Like with ITV Schools, they were shown at precise times to the minute. Secondary schools programming tended to be longer, often running for nearly 30 or 45 minutes at most.

Toffa Schools went to air on Monday 3 September 2018 at 9am, with the first programme being *Words for the Memory*, produced by Toffa in-house, to begin the primary strand. The secondary strand began at 12pm with *Starting at GCSEs*, produced by Kharis Productions, which had also produced at least 16% of Toffa's educational programming, mainly for secondary schools. Ratings held up rather respectably; the whole strand was watched by an average of 300,000, double than what Toffa often got; peaking at 410k. Viewer feedback was positive, who welcomed the return of educational programming to television, and was particularly well received by parents who suggested for their children to watch Toffa Schools programming while off school as a compromise.

Over the course of 2019, Toffa Schools continued to grow in viewership, and more new programming was commissioned. When *The Jeremy Kyle Show* was axed in May 2019, Toffa had initially conceived a suggestion to ITV of broadcasting schools programming at the 9:25am timeslot it vacated as they felt something more educational, and the complete antidote to Jeremy Kyle would be more suitable. Talks continued for a few weeks, but ITV ultimately declined the offer - instead opting to extended *Good Morning Britain* and *This Morning* by 30 minutes from January 2020.

## Presentation

Toffa Schools' first presentation, used from September 2018 to December 2019, paid homage to the classic 1987-1993 ITV Schools on Channel 4 look, as well as reusing the music used in that era, including *The Journey* for the holding slide, and *Just a Minute* for the 60-second clock though very slightly tweaked. The presentation was closely in-line with Toffa's 2013 look with its own individual and authoritative feel.

In January 2020, the presentation was changed again to coincide with the channel's new look, and its idents which saw the channel's T-hole symbol in various guises, akin to ITV Central's mid-late 90s set.