It broadcast programming aimed at students in Primary, Secondary and Higher Education as well as to adult learners.

Previously, these educational programmes had been based on the channel in mornings and often until the early afternoon on weekdays.

The idea had been around for a while: by 1995, ITV was operating as a 24-hour channel, freeing up their prime time and daytime schedules.

[1] When BBC Two's regular programmes concluded for the night, the channel would transfer to Pages from Ceefax, until the service began at 12.30am (2am on Monday mornings).

In 2010, the remaining primary schools programmes, previously shown at 11am for one hour during weekdays (except Wednesday), were transferred to the Learning Zone from BBC Two.

As compensation, the BBC launched a section called Learning Zone Broadband, or more simply Class Clips which includes segments from Learning Zone as well as clips taken from other relevant BBC programmes.

This service provided teachers and students with a range of resources, including case studies and experiments, to use in class or elsewhere.

On 6 October 1997, when the strand became separate, the station's current identification was created, showing an oak tree and an acorn.

The acorn falls from a tree, while a number of identification processes take place, including a thermal image, a database match on computer, measurements taken, newspaper archives, aerodynamic investigation, cross section, 3D image and the name in different languages before the acorn finally falls to the ground and seeds to become an oak sapling.

Programme menus and static information slides were made using the logo at the bottom, and an image related to the identification featuring in the background.

Both new devices were colour-coded to the strand: blue for Open University, green for languages and red for schools.