Tag: Education

Education supplier RM comes up with “satisfactory” results

Posted on February 16, 2022 by - News

RM chief executive Neil Martin said his outfit came up with “satisfactory” sales results in 2021.

Martin said that in the face of ongoing challenges in the education sector sales jumped 12 percent and revenue was £210.9 million for the full year ending 30 November 2021.

During the same period last year the company’s results were £189 million.

Adjusted operating profit grew 22 percent to £18.5 million but statutory profit after tax was down 45 percent, which RM said was due to “£8.3 million of investment programme costs expensed following a change in accounting treatment”.

HP takes the bus for educational partners

Posted on January 27, 2020 by - News

The maker of expensive printer ink, HP, is taking to the road in a bus to support its education partners and get its wares in front of 25,000 students over the course of this year.

The idea is that resellers across the country can request that the bus makes a stop near them to help drum up interest from schools and educational institutions.

Neil Sawyer, channel and education director at HP, said that it hoped that increasing support for educational resellers would benefit existing partners as well as encouraging some fresh faces to get involved in the market.

HP investing £4 million into education

Posted on January 28, 2019 by - News

The maker of expensive printer ink, HP, is putting £4 million into its HP for Education scheme in what is a record investment for the initiative.

HP education business director  Neil Sawyer said that the programme is centred around HP’s education resellers who took a training and certification programme with the outfit last year.

When they sell HP technology to schools, the schools receive credits to allow them to invest in more tech.

HP wants to expand its Ripple Effect

Posted on October 13, 2017 by - News

raspberryrippleicecr_91970_16x9HP is to increase the number of its education vertical resellers involved in its ‘Ripple Effect’ grant scheme.

The scheme – which was launched earlier in the summer – gives resellers £20,000 to grant to schools who buy HP tech though them.

So far, Misco, Softcat, XMA and Academia have signed up with each reseller announced a winning school of their own separate competitions among school customers who had recently purchased HP hardware through them.

The four winners will receive a HP Learning Studio from their respective reseller. The £20,000 suite of HP tech includes a HP Sprout G2 – an immersive computing 3D PC – and a Dremel Idea Builder 3D40 – an education-focused 3D Printer.

The grant scheme will target all HP core education resellers in the UK&I  over the next three to five-years.

HP is targeting new education focussed resellers to help address a chronic challenge facing the vertical: the endemic STEM worker shortfall, currently estimated at 40,000 in the UK.

Most schools only have about £115 pounds per student per year to spend on technology.  HP said that some of its resellers have been screaming out for action and that is why it is investing.

SupplyNow needs no education

Posted on September 11, 2017 by - News

hqdefault (1)SupplyNow, an ed-tech startup, launching in Kent, Surrey and London, has said that it wants to transform the broken UK supply teaching market by directly connecting fully vetted supply staff with schools.

The  platform offers up to 25 percent higher pay, robust safeguarding controls and complete transparency – reducing school costs, saving huge agency fees and enabling more to be spent on bettering schools, via a simple self-service interface.

Aimi Kearney said that her fellow co-founders believe the supply market is broken. Spending is increasing, with agencies charging exorbitant fees.

“Using innovative technology, control is returned to the supply heroes and schools by combining self-service convenience with fair pricing. The time is right to disrupt the education market and rebalance the power, keeping more money in the education system”,  she said.

Simon Taylor has spent most of his career in recruitment said: “Temporary education staff are the only professional group I can think of where ‘contractors’ are paid less than permanent staff. Often underpaid and massively undervalued, this hidden workforce ensures that over 15,000 classes are taught every day in the UK. This stops potentially 30 parents/carers per class (450,000 families) receiving a call at work, to say their child is being sent home as there’s no teacher. Without this, what kind of impact would there be on the UK economy?” SupplyNow demonstrates how smart technology can transform school budgets, improving educational outcomes.

Agencies typically charge a 40 percent margin, so schools in need of supply staff could benefit from SupplyNow’s model, which works on a 13 percent margin and a permanent placement fee cap after 30 days’ work. “We want to greatly improve upon the traditional ways of finding supply work by listening to customers and education experts and staying true to our values” says James Bailey. SupplyNow has collaborated with experts in recruitment, compliance, technology and education to develop the app; currently in the final stages of vetting and beta testing and having already hundreds of supply staff registered. It has successfully conducted tests demonstrating an average saving of £7-10,000 per permanent hire, which can be spent on critical resources instead.

SupplyNow continues to grow its early adopter programme, which includes qualified teachers, teaching assistants and schools who have registered for their service, interested in being the first to be involved with important company and app updates.

Kids discouraged from being IT entrepreneurs

Posted on May 23, 2017 by - News

Favim.com-30121A study by Nominet found that only nine percent of parents would like their children to choose a career as a tech entrepreneur, web developer or computer games developer.

Of these parents were more likely to steer boys than girls towards a technology career – 13 percent of parents said they would want their son to pursue a career as a tech entrepreneur or games developer, whereas these roles did not appear at all in the top five roles that parents suggested for girls.

A career as an engineer was the top choice of parents for boys to pursue in the future, whereas a quarter or parents hoped girls would become doctors – and only six percent hoped their daughters would become tech entrepreneurs.

Eleanor Bradley, COO of Nominet, said the UK had the potential to be a hub for tech in the future as it begins to grow its digital economy, but parents needed to encourage their children into technology roles for these efforts to succeed.

“Parents are one of the greatest influences on their children’s future decisions, much more than they perhaps give themselves credit for, and I encourage everyone to help all young people – and especially girls – to consider the possibilities the tech industry has to offer,” said Bradley.

The UK IT industry is suffering from a skills gap, and the government has tried to develop a bigger pipeline of young people with relevant skills by introducing the computing curriculum in 2014, making it compulsory for children between the ages of five and 16 to learn concepts such as computational thinking.

Many parents are beginning to understand the importance of computing skills, with 45 percent in the study thinking computing studies will give children useful skills to have after they leave school.

Only 19 percent of parents think coding skills will be important for future jobs.

Dads are often seen as less of a barrier for girls attempting to pursue a technology career than mums, and the Nominet research found dads are more likely to encourage children to attend tech-based after-school activities in general.

HP needs some more education

Posted on June 8, 2016 by - News


tumblr_mcexe0a4MI1rcf9cjo1_500The maker of expensive printer ink HP has announced the launch of a new education scheme which offers big discounts to schools.

Schools that buy HP hardware using one of its authorised resellers can get credits of up to £250 per device. These credits can then be redeemed in the form of education software, training and further hardware upgrades.

Neil Sawyer, education & channel director at HP said that HP  HP, we recognise that schools often face difficult decisions on where to invest their ICT budgets. We want to give schools access to the latest technology, matched with the best education software, training and support services on the market, so that they are truly getting the most from their ICT investment.” said .

The programme is available through the following HP education channel partners; XMA, Academia, European Electronique, C-Learning, Insight, Misco, System Active, Lanway and Getech.

Ian Cunningham, client commercial director at XMA, commented: “With the ability to instantly unlock additional budget through this excellent initiative, it gives educational establishments a greater opportunity to apply more focus on transforming learning outcomes for students and teachers whilst at the same time delivering a more engaging learning experience.”

Schools will be able to claim for device training days for staff and students on HP Windows 10 tablets or Google Chromebooks. A range of discounted software will also be available. Frog Software and eLearning solution provider bksb are providing their software via the programme.

Chromebooks outclass iPads

Posted on July 25, 2014 by - News

classApple’s dominance over the tablet market is slumping but one thing that the Tame Apple Press is failing to say is that they are being eclipsed by Chromebooks.

Jobs’ Mob has admitted that it only sold 13.3 million iPads, down nine percent from last year, but Apple CFO Luca Maestri insisted that in education, the iPad remains the tablet of choice with 85 percent share of the US education tablet market. She said that Apple had sold 13 million iPads to education customers globally.

But while Apple leads the academic market for tablets, not all schools are buying iPads to give to students; they’re also buying laptops, including Chromebooks. In otherwords, while Apple is leading tablet sales, that is because its main rival is not providing tablets.

Chromebooks run ChromeOS on what would best be described a cheap laptop hardware – although there are a few premium models like the Pixel – with an Intel CPU. Google has a number of hardware partners, including Acer, which lead the pack with 30 percent of the Chromebook market.

Apparently, sales have been so good that Google only recently added tablets to the range.

Google reported a few days ago that it sold a million Chromebooks to schools last quarter (another 800,000 were sold to consumers. While that might not look nearly as impressive as Apple’s 13 million iPads, the numbers suggest  that Google could be selling as many Chromebooks to schools as Apple is selling iPads.

You can work it out. If schools bought five million iPads in the 17 months,  Apple averaged under a million iPads sold to schools each quarter – an average which is less than the million Chromebooks sold.

So why are Chromebooks doing so well?  They are cheaper and they have keyboards so you can do a lot more with them.

Dell grabs 1st place in notebook education

Posted on August 13, 2013 by - News

Michael DellDell has been approved under all three National Desktop and Notebook Agreement framework lots, meaning the company will once again be able to sell its  gear to consortia-affiliated universities and colleges.

Dell is now certified in six National Framework Agreements for universities, further education, and the UK’s Research Council, the company points out.

NDNA is a significant procurement path for selling products to the higher education sector, with the majority of institutions subscribing to the framework.

The company can provide desktops, notebooks, and services, marking an approximate combined value of roughly £310 million for the up to four years of the framework.

Dell grabbed first place in the notebook lot, meaning the consortia can contract Dell without bids from the competition.

The company cited its existing relationships with universities like Aberdeen, Cambridge, and UCL, and that it has supplied over 40 percent of UK unis with desktops or notebooks.

If universities so want, they can buy Dell kit without lengthy tender processes, as well as consistent pricing across desktops, workstations, thin clients, services, and tablet hardware – though the latter may not be particularly appealing to date. Dell also has a technical pre- and post- sales team dedicated to higher education.

Director for education at Dell UK, Kenneth Harley, said that IT is a “vital component” for education institutions to maintain their competitiveness and attract top students. “To do this, the provision of a personalised learning experience supported by best in class, affordable IT is crucial,” Harley said.

Education hardware sees growth

Posted on April 30, 2013 by - News

ClassroomEducation hardware spend grew in 2012.

According to Futuresource Consulting, the sector saw an increase of 23 percent to a total spend of $11.6 Billion, from 2011.

The analyst company said this was a strong result compared to other markets and considering the pressure on education budgets across the world.

Looking to the future, the company predicted that the total value is expected to   reach $21 billion by 2017, a CAGR of 12 percent from 2012 to 2017.

It also claimed that as well as raking in the cash the education sector was slowly moving digital, potentially opening up a wide range of revenue stream opportunities in hardware, software, content, infrastructure and services for suppliers.

This increase of spend in education technology has been driven by the uplift in the mobile PC market, which at $6.8 billion, now accounts for 59 percent of the total spend, up from 51 percent.

The explosion of tablets and ‘one to one learning programmes’ primarily driven by the iPad and now the iPad mini, are also expected to accelerate growth in 2013.

And traditional education tools are also helping fuel revenue. In 2012, a million interactive board displays were sold, marking an annual increase of 15 percent the company said.

The interactive projector market is  also expected to have some of the greatest growth in the classroom technology market, with a 2012 – 2017 volume CAGR of 19 percent.