Dear Sirs

I have a 3 year old child who watches Cbeebies - along with me!  and I have 
the following comments on the service:

1.  Overall, the format, and the presenters are very watchable and some 
educational material appears to be creeping in from the beginning of this 
year (pre-empting point 2. below!).

2.  My main gripe(!)  is that there is very little educational content in 
many of the programmes at all.  Programmes such as Bob the Builder,  Little 
Robots, and the Tweenies are good fun and a great money spinner for the BBC, 
but I can't see programmes of this ilk helping kids with literacy, or 
numbers or any of the other educational requirements for giving a children a 
leg-up when they start school.  I would class this sort of programme as 
equivalent to soaps for kids - watchable but just a lot of froth.  
Unfortunately, some parents do leave their kids in front of the TV, 
believing it to be an educator, especially if a channel is from the BBC.  I 
feel very strongly that programmes of this sort are helping deaden the love 
of learning that small children have.  Any social skills these programmes 
purport to teach are not real, as social skills develop from actually mixing 
with others, not from watching TV.

3.  Some programmes with educational content seem to have crept into the 
schedule such as Bobinogs and the recycled Tots TV and the excellent (but 
too loud) Boo!, which while not teaching abc or 123 to children, do provide 
a useful function in teaching kids methods of behaviour, and the world 
around them.  Other programmes such as Smarteenies are empowering as they 
show kids something amazing that that they can do themselves - and provide 
lots of ideas for parents.  Tikkabilla is good as each programme teaches as 
well as entertains - the pacing is very good as the child stays interested 
throughout (same comment for Big Cook, Little Cook).  Storymakers is great 
too.
One of the tests of whether a programme is 'good' or not, should be how much 
a child remembers of the story / message afterwards, or whether it all melds 
into a big gloop.

4.  Please, please re-introduce Sesame Street or something similar, where 
the letters of the alphabet and counting are introduced and repeated in a 
fun way.  I would be very interested to know what percentage of kids start 
school at age 5 with no knowledge of abc or 123, and if there is any 
correlation between this and average hours spent watching the Cbeebies 
channel...

As you can probably tell, I feel very strongly about this, as this channel, 
rightly or wrongly, is teaching/influencing what a lot of children learn in 
their most formative and impressionable years.  Please feel free to get back 
to me if there is anything you wish to discuss,
yours
Sharda Bali