MUMBAI: PBS and Discovery Education have inked a major multi-year media partnership through which PBS has licensed hundreds of hours from its most acclaimed series and specials for distribution to schools through Discovery Education's digital learning services.

PBS titles to be made available via Discovery Education include The Civil War and other Ken Burns documentaries; Freedom: A History of US; the complete CyberChase series; and selected episodes from Nova, American Experience, Frontline and others.

A number of local PBS stations already partner with Discovery Education in delivering its flagship video-on-demand service and united streaming as part of their portfolio of local education offerings.

"For both PBS and our local stations, this new partnership represents an important opportunity to bring PBS content to a growing audience of educators. PBS is entering into a number of new, non-exclusive licensing relationships to broaden the reach of our award-winning education resources, and we are pleased that the first of these new partnerships is with Discovery Education," said PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger.

Beginning this fall, schools nationwide will have the opportunity to receive the PBS library as a supplement to united streaming. As with all content delivered through united streaming, the PBS programs will be correlated to state curriculum standards, chaptered into content-specific video clips and offered for teachers to stream or download for instructional use.

"This expansion of Discovery Education's relationship with PBS underscores the alignments of our values and missions. We're delighted that this arrangement will give teachers and students the opportunity to access these high-quality titles -- on-demand -- through our award-winning platform," said Discovery Education president Steve Sidel.