ETV has been an auxiliary means for teaching the primary and secondary school curriculum on television since the early 1970s.

Programmes are broadcast during daytime non-peak hours on the English channels of TVB and ATV from Monday to Friday, during the 32 weeks of the school year.

As the popularity of the Internet has increased, ETV has made its programmes available on the World Wide Web on demand.

In the early days, it covered the primary subjects of Chinese language, English language and Mathematics, and the secondary subjects Social Studies, Health Education (absent in secondary school) and Nature (later renamed to Science).

Later the secondary subjects were merged to General Studies for primary school as the curriculum changed.

During normal school terms, ETV programmes are broadcast from Monday to Friday (except some long school vacations like public holidays and weekend) on the free-to-air terrestrial television channels such: TVB Pearl and ATV World alternately so that one of the stations broadcasts ETV television programmes in the morning from 08:00 until 12:00 HKT on TVB Pearl and television programmes in the noon from 12:00 until 16:00 HKT on ATV World.

In each academic year the two English free-to-air terrestrial television stations such: TVB Pearl and ATV World.