Way back, before Coppice existed, Patricia Gillard and Debbie Black designed two big national surveys of school teachers. They worked for ABC Research at the time. It was before email so 1,301 primary school teachers and 3,063 secondary school teachers returned envelopes to the ABC’s Sydney office.

The teachers were asked which ABC schools programs they used and how useful they were.

The TV program, Behind the News was estimated to have 941,100 primary school viewers and 341,000 secondary school viewers.

The findings showed how important this program was to teachers and students in 1986.  It has kept building audiences over the last thirty years. I wonder how many Australian children watch it regularly now?

Upload a few pages from the 1987 Report for Primary Schools.