BBC Education in dispute

An industrial action ballot is being run among BBC Education members after reorganisation talks broke down.

The ballot, due to start in the third week of October, follows the union's rejection of management plans to split up BBC Education and move its staff to other departments.

Read details of Education ballot

Proposals for a shake-up of the BBC's Factual and Learning Division, which includes Education, had been under discussion for only four weeks, when the union declared a dispute at a final meeting on October 5.

Throughout the talks the union had challenged the central theme of the reorganisation - the effective scrapping of Education as a separate specialist section.

Responsibility for production programmes in the "Learning" genre would, under the management's proposals, transfer to other parts of the Factual and Learning Division, or to Children's department, part of the new Drama, Entertainment and Children's Division.

Educational Publishing, currently in Education, would also move back to BBC Worldwide, the Division it left five years ago.

Members in BBC Education believe that the changes will "dilute the brand", and fragment the expertise that has been built up within the section. Management have been accused of rushing the plan through without proper consultation - schools and colleges who use Education's output for teaching have not been asked for their views on the change.

Concerns have also been raised about the longer-term shift away from normal TV and radio programming as a means of distribution, into new media and the internet. Management offered staff extensive training in digital media during the discussions, but union representatives thought that a change in method of distribution would exacerbate the problems of digital exclusion among groups and communities who did not have access to the internet.

While the union accepted that a longer-term move into new media was inevitable, the current proposal was criticised as being "too far, too soon".

Producers in BBC Education have expressed fears that they would not be allowed to pursue specialist educational programming once they had been transferred to general production departments.

Passion has run high in Education over the reorganisation, even though management have stated categorically that there will be no redundancies as a direct result of the changes. Members meeting on September 29 voted unanimously to ballot for industrial action if management refused to accept union pleas to reconsider their plans for the department.