Education resources
Inside information on classifying film in the UK
Hello and welcome to the BBFC’s Education Resources. This area of the site is for students and teachers. Whether you’re researching an essay or looking for information on the age rating of a favourite cult movie, you’ll find all you need here.
This is inside information from the people in the know at the BBFC. Our Education Resources are an essential tool for students and teachers across the UK with an interest in investigating UK film, DVD and video on demand (VoD) age ratings, the history of video game regulation, the British media, and media regulation and censorship. We hope it also provides useful background information for those studying film and the media more broadly.
It includes many features that are well established among people who are familiar with our education work and these are as follows:
- Case Studies on films, including many set film texts for Film Studies courses in the UK
- our Student guide examining famous decisions, key films and commentary on the BBFC and its history
- Timelines highlighting key events related to issues like drugs, sexual violence and legislation
- Detailed histories of the Board and UK law and regulation
- In depth articles by BBFC staff in Education News
And there's much, much more
Elsewhere on this site, you can search through our press releases, research and decision making, including ratings info, and information about cuts and film ratings in our comprehensive database of titles.
We have interactive features too, including Rate a trailer which is your chance to analyse trailers and compare your thoughts on age rating recommendations with those of BBFC Compliance Officers.
We have a long established education programme, visiting schools, colleges and universities across the UK, and also working with other groups and partners, including film festivals, youth groups, cinemas and adult education providers.
Our educational visits are free, although we accept contributions towards travel and accommodation where possible, as this helps us to continue providing the service.
Seminars, video conferencing and other resources
If you’re a teacher, you are welcome to use the site to request a speaker from the BBFC comes to your school, to book places at BBFC term time seminars, contact us to organise interviews with BBFC staff for students doing dissertations or presentations, and to ask for other resources, such as our free classroom poster.
We offer inhouse seminars bi-weekly in term time. And if you can’t come to us, we can provide videoconferencing or Skype workshops where our Compliance Officers will answer your students' questions and discuss films, censorship, classifying today, important and controversial decisions and key issues with your class. For more information on booking a session click here.
Research and online regulation
If you’re interested in how public opinion shapes our Classification Guidelines, you can access our research reports.
And you can read about our work with the home entertainment industry to encourage the use of our age ratings for UK video on demand (VoD) services.
There’s no law requiring VoD services or distributors to get and display age ratings. But we encourage and promote their voluntary use. We also help mobile phone operators set mobile internet filters at the right level to keep unsuitable content away from children.
And we are setting the standards for how the adult industry age-verifies people accessing online pornography. This is required by law under the Digital Economy Act 2017 (DEA) and there is a website dedicated to this area of our work.