The Great Grange Hill Debate

The Great Grange Hill Debate was a one-off BBC documentary that looked at the debate around the suitability of Grange Hill. It was broadcast on 4 March 1980, in what until the previous week had been the series's regular slot on BBC One, and presented by Toni Arthur and Paul Burden, both established BBC presenters.

The programme confronted the criticism of the series by many parents and contrasted it with seven out of every ten children watching the series. A group of nine school age children were assembled in a classroom set and asked what they felt about the show with most saying how they liked it. Some children said the series felt like their experience of school though others suggested it was different from the experience at single-sex schools.

Pre filmed interviews were also shown, ranging from a parent who described how her five year old daughter had been upset by an episode to a headmaster of a comprehensive school who praised the series for giving school children a chance to see situations that occur in schools without being personally involved, but noted how it could have a copycat effect such as when the show's bicycle theft storyline was followed by a real life outbreak of damage to bicycles at the school. In the classroom the children pointed out how the series had shown there were consequences to bad behaviour and how it prepared younger children for secondary school.

The programme also went out onto a street and took brief interviews with a number of adults who expressed mixed views and noted how the children liked it. A comprehensive school teacher noted how the show's transmission time probably wasn't the best for parents who often were not sitting down and watching the whole show but instead only catching out of context snippets, and suggested it should go at a time when it could be immediately discussed. In the classroom the children challenged some of the assumptions about the series, including pointing out that the pupils in the show never swore despite what interviewees had claimed.

Near the end the question was raised as to whether the series should be cancelled and the children unanimously disagreed, suggesting that parents who didn't like the show could simply not watch it and cancelling the series wasn't going to change what real schools were actually like.