The BBC has frozen the roll-out of five new elements of content for its BBC Jam online education service for children pending a review of its performance early in January.
The decision came after intervention by the Government and the European Union. A BBC spokesperson said, "We have agreed in principle with the Government that there should be a review of BBC Jam content, to check how well it is meeting the terms of its approval. The details should be settled early in January but in the meantime the BBC has agreed to suspend temporarily the roll-out of any further Jam content." The materials that have been held back are PE (7-11), Geography (11-14), History (7-11), English (7-11) and Statistics (14-16).
It is understood that Europe still has concerns over competition issues surrounding BBC Jam, formerly the BBC Digital Curriculum. This was the reason for the millions of pounds worth of eLearning Credits made available to schools for digital content to counter fears that free materials from the BBC, paid for by licence fees, would distort the education ICT market.
