About CETV-4

CETV-4

CETV-4 is the schools channel of China Education Television, the educational broadcaster sponsored by China's Ministry of Education and based in Beijing. It is best known by its former name, the Air Classroom Channel. Described by its operator as a public-welfare satellite channel covering the whole nation, it focuses on primary and secondary schools, teachers and parents, combining lessons and documentaries. The Air Classroom played an important role in keeping classes going after the SARS outbreak of 2003 and the Sichuan and Yushu earthquakes, and it was formally approved by China's broadcasting regulator on 11 December 2008. On 1 January 2012 the channel was revised, combining documentaries with textbooks as part of its courses.

Origins in the SARS emergency of 2003

The Air Classroom began as an emergency measure. A temporary Air Classroom channel was initiated in May 2003, when millions of primary and middle school students had to stay at home because of the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic. In Beijing, education departments launched Classroom on the Air programmes for more than 1.7 million elementary and middle school pupils between 6 and 25 May 2003. CETV's vice president Chen Li recalled that once the lessons were shown, schools appreciated them and asked for more, and preparations for a satellite channel began with the deep involvement of the Ministry of Education and the support of the national broadcasting bureau; it took less than ten days for the new channel to begin operations. Teachers for the service were chosen from noted schools, and satellite broadband was used to allow interaction between students and teachers.

From emergency service to permanent channel

What began in crisis became a standing service. China Education Television later moved to open the Air Classroom as a permanent satellite channel offering educational services and vocational training for primary and middle school students, teachers and migrant workers. In its announced form, the channel would broadcast four hours of on-campus extra-curricular activities, six and a half hours of high-quality lessons by well-known teachers, and four hours of teacher training programmes, on a timetable scheduled in accord with that of schools so that students and teachers could watch. Fifteen percent of its time was left free for vocational education and training for migrant workers. Editor-in-chief Chen Li also described a plan for the channel to provide distance training during the summer vacation for 350,000 teachers in 100 counties in the underdeveloped central and western areas of China.

Service in earthquakes and formal approval

The channel was again put into use in May 2008 for students in areas hit by the massive earthquake in southwest China, and the broadcaster records that the Air Class Channel played an important role in the resumption of school classes after SARS, the Wenchuan (Sichuan) earthquake and the Yushu earthquake. On 11 December 2008, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television gave an official reply approving the Air Class channel run by CETV. That approval regularised a service that had proved itself in three national emergencies, and confirmed its status as a national satellite channel of the Ministry of Education's broadcaster.

The 2012 revision

On 1 January 2012, the Air Class Channel was revised by combining documentaries and textbooks. In the revised model described by the broadcaster, documentaries became after-class reading materials and part of the courses themselves, a way for teenagers to acquire knowledge and to learn about the world, its history and its future. The change softened the channel's original classroom-only character: lessons remained at its core, but documentary material was formally built into the curriculum it delivered. The channel that emerged from the revision is CETV-4, a welfare satellite channel focused on primary and secondary schools, teachers and parents, providing documentaries alongside its teaching content.

Place in the China Education Television family

China Education Television made its first broadcast on 1 October 1986. CETV-1 is its comprehensive education flagship, enjoying the same policy support as CCTV-1 and covering more than 2,000 colleges and universities and 400,000 primary and secondary schools. CETV-2 has carried adult and continuing education, including the courses of the China Central Radio and TV University. CETV-3 is the humanistic documentary channel broadcast in Beijing. The Early Education Channel, launched in 2005, serves early childhood education. CETV-4's distinct place in this family is basic education: it is the channel addressed to the compulsory-education years, to the teachers who deliver them and to the parents who support them.

Programming

CETV-4's programming follows from its audience. Lessons by well-known teachers, scheduled to match the school timetable, form its backbone, supplemented by extra-curricular activities, teacher training and, since 2012, documentaries integrated with textbook material. In emergencies its schedule has been reorganised entirely around keeping displaced or home-bound pupils learning, the function for which it was created in 2003. In normal times the same structure serves rural and remote schools in particular: a national satellite channel can deliver lessons from noted teachers in Beijing to classrooms in central and western China that have few specialist teachers of their own, and can train serving teachers at a distance, as in the plan to reach 350,000 teachers across 100 counties.

Ownership and public-welfare status

CETV-4 is operated by China Education Television, the television station of China's Ministry of Education, headquartered in Beijing. The broadcaster calls it a welfare, or public-service, satellite channel, language that marks it as a non-commercial service run for educational benefit. Its regulatory approval in December 2008 came from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, then China's broadcasting regulator. Within China's broadcasting structure, CETV stands with CCTV as a national-level broadcaster in Beijing, but with an exclusively educational remit.

Distribution and language

The channel covers the whole nation by satellite and is carried on cable and IPTV systems across China, broadcasting in Mandarin. Its reception network is the educational system itself: primary and secondary schools are both its subject and its audience, alongside teachers and parents watching at home. Satellite delivery is essential to its purpose, because the pupils and teachers it most exists to serve are those far from the educational resources of the big cities, including in the central and western regions named in its teacher-training plans.

Significance

CETV-4, the Air Classroom, is one of the clearest examples anywhere of television built as educational infrastructure. Created in under ten days during the SARS closures of May 2003, reused after the Sichuan and Yushu earthquakes, approved as a permanent channel in December 2008 and revised in January 2012 to weave documentaries into textbook learning, it has spent two decades as the schools channel of China's Ministry of Education broadcaster: a national satellite service whose measure is not ratings but whether classes can go on.

How the Air Classroom worked

Accounts of the original SARS service show how deliberately the Air Classroom was built. The curricula in the Classroom on the Air kept increasing to cater to the learning appetites of different students, the teachers invited to present were chosen from noted schools for their rich teaching experience, and technicians used satellite broadband to achieve distant interaction between students and teachers, so that the service was more than one-way broadcasting. Programmes were presented, in the words of those who made them, as a practical contribution to the primary and middle school students who formed the majority of the target audience during the emergency. The same design, lessons matched to the school timetable, well-known teachers, and satellite delivery to places the teachers could not reach, became the permanent channel's design when CETV and the Ministry of Education turned the emergency service into a standing satellite channel for students, teachers and migrant workers, with set proportions of lessons, extra-curricular activity and teacher training across its day.