It's Academic is an Australian children's game show which is based on the long-running American version of It's Academic, and pits students from different schools against each other in a test of knowledge covering a number of diverse subjects including English, mathematics, science, geography, sport, music and popular culture. History The show originally aired on Network Ten from 1968 and 1969 being hosted by John Bailey and then on the Seven Network from 1970 to 1978. In the years 2001 to 2004, Seven Perth revived the show, where it was broadcast locally, leading to a national relaunch on 17 October 2005. The last version on 7TWO featured schoolchildren in Grade 6, aged around 11 to 12 years old. The early incarnation of It's Academic was the basis for a series of sketches from The Late Show in which Santo Cilauro, Rob Sitch and Tom Gleisner, who all claimed to have gone to the same school, competed on the program with incredible but humorous incompetence. Coincidentally, their sometime collaborator actor/comedian Magda Szubanski had actually captained a team as a Year 10 student at Siena College in Melbourne, in 1976. Hosts in the 1970s included Danny Webb (HSV-7),Trevor Sutton (Television Host) BTQ-7 Andrew Harwood (ATN-7 and HSV-7), Sandy Roberts (ADS-7), Alec McAskill (ADS-7), Jeff Newman (TVW-7) and John Bailey. In recent years, Jeff Newman once again hosted Perth's version of It's Academic while Simon Reeve fronts the national version. Format Original format The 1960s–70s version of It's Academic was conducted on a per-state basis, with episodes featuring on-air contestants in teams of three, with an official fourth as a reserve, each from one of three different high schools from that state. Contestants were aged around 15 or 16 years, in Year Ten at High School. Winning teams would progress through to state semifinals and finals. In many years, state champion teams met in a national grand finals. Shows were recorded with large live audiences on Saturdays with school staff representatives supervising the contest. In early rounds, team captains would 'pick a packet' (a numbered pack of ten questions) from a board of numbered options. Teams could answer these questions with no penalties for incorrect answers, but each round was time-limited, and teams could pass on difficult questions to attempt remaining questions before returning to passed questions. All team members could respond to questions; in cases where two answers were given at the