Well, they needed /something/ to run on the BBC micro.
Part of the BBC's mandate (public funding requires public benefit, the mandate is essentially the contractual definition of the BBC's "deliverables") requires the production of educational content. As part of this, they had a programs for computer literacy in the early 80s - and commissioned a computer to go with them. So we had the BBC Micro running BBC Basic. We still had some left in school well into the 90s.
It's an interesting bit of history, because it gave a huge boost to the company that won the contract. Acorn soon after went on to develop the Acorn RISC Machine, featuring the ARM1 processor.
Part of the BBC's mandate (public funding requires public benefit, the mandate is essentially the contractual definition of the BBC's "deliverables") requires the production of educational content. As part of this, they had a programs for computer literacy in the early 80s - and commissioned a computer to go with them. So we had the BBC Micro running BBC Basic. We still had some left in school well into the 90s.
It's an interesting bit of history, because it gave a huge boost to the company that won the contract. Acorn soon after went on to develop the Acorn RISC Machine, featuring the ARM1 processor.