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Inclusive backs BBC Curriculum Online
July 2002
NEW - Reply from David Haggie of the Digital Learning Alliance. (17/07/2002)
Inclusive Technology backs the BBC's plans to provide £170 million of Curriculum Online resources free to schools. We are told that: "The whole of the educational software industry is united in its opposition to the BBC proposals" We aren't.
The argument put forward by the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) runs like this. "If the BBC provide £170 million of educational resources 'free to air' schools won't pay the commercial software publishers for similar competing resources. So commercial software publishers will disappear" the argument continues "and schools will have less choice". ESPA the software publishers' section of BESA used much the same arguments when they opposed the original Tesco Computers in Schools scheme.
 Espresso's Lewis Bronze |
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| To lead their campaign the combined forces of BESA and the Publishers Association have appointed (they say "unveiled") Espresso's Lewis Bronze as the Chairman of "Choices for Schools" and launched choiceforschools.org.uk web site. |
The web site, launched with a fanfare on February 11th has stuck at two rather gloomy paragraphs and I can't see it alone getting schools clamoring for choice, or turkeys voting for Christmas.
It does not really behove an industry serving education to try to deprive schools of free good quality resources and, as Dean Acheson said of the Vietnam War, "It is worse than immoral, it's a mistake".
It is a mistake because there is no "broadband" market in schools yet. In a new field like this you need a big beast like the BBC to go in and trample the thistles before the likes of us can enter at all. If the BBC can produce a critical mass of good material to get schools interested - to make them feel there is value in this technology - then commercial producers will have a market to sell to, just as they did with the original Acorn "BBC" computer and software.
It is immoral because the industry cannot pretend to offer anything near the scale of what the BBC is proposing. If the BBC is prevented from going ahead, schools won't have choice - they will have next to nothing.
Lord Puttnam, special adviser to education secretary Estelle Morris, said that the only opponents of BBC involvement are "one large company and one small company". I guess the large company is RM. It is sobering to reflect that today the BBC's £170,000,000 would buy the every share in RM - almost three times over!
(RM's value has fallen from £562 million to £69 million in the last twelve months according to the Investors' Chronicle 07/06/2002.)
But RM's reduced annual sales of £200 million pounds still make her the giant in our industry.
I think Lord Puttnam's "one small company" is Espresso. You have to admire the quality and quantity of broadband resources Espresso is pumping into schools via their weekly satellite feed. Education is lucky to have characters like Espresso's ex-BBC Blue Peter editor, Lewis Bronze, with the credibility to get the City to invest in broadband resources for schools. But, like most of our industry, Espresso is tiny. Last time their sales were reported they were less than a million pounds. I guess now they will be one, two or three million pounds annual sales like the rest of the industry. Only Granada Learning is larger and I guess they will still be shy of £9 million annual sales when they next report.
How can an industry this small pretend to offer an alternative resource development budget to the BBC's £170 million? This sum of money would easily buy the whole British educational software industry. We would not be giving schools choice, we would be depriving them of resources altogether.
Let the BBC go ahead. They say they will spend half of the money with independent content producers and there is £50 million more of government money going into Curriculum Online too. Schools will only take to broadband when the word "broadband" is forgotten and schools are just used to getting excellent curriculum resources and professional development material arriving straight into their school.
Once this material is popular people will want more - or different access to what is there already. This is where the educational software industry comes in.
Finally. Is special needs leading the way again? North America with its 300 million people is used to supplying our 60 million market with the overspill of educational software and technology. They certainly produce excellent assistive technology and special needs products: AbleNet, AMDi, Edmark, Don Johnston, IntelliTools (not to mention Microsoft).
Now UK educational suppliers are cottoning on to the fact that if you have a combined trans-Atlantic English speaking market of 360 million (plus Australia and New Zealand, who prefer British resources to American) you can produce better products that cost less. This is especially important for low-incidence disabilities. Thanks to Crick's work over in the United States, Clicker is increasingly well known. So is Widgit's Writing with Symbols (which Mayer Johnson distribute). TextHelp is very active and Penny and Giles 4talk4 joins their very successful Roller range in the US. IntelliTools have published Inclusive's original SwitchIt! software for some years and Inclusive TLC, Inc. now sell much more of our range. These are all (or were originally) special needs products. But if there is a single mainstream ICT product, made in the UK and selling in the US, I don't know what it is.
The ballooning importance of English is a great global opportunity for the British educational publishing industry. This should be Lord Puttnam's "Hollywood of Educational Resources". We should stand on British shores eyes raised beyond the horizon - not concentrate on kicking over each other's sandcastles. Bless you BBC. BESA, think bigger!
Martin Littler
1st July 2002
Addendum
David Haggie from the Digital Learning Alliance, a new body that seems to be picking up the Choices for Schools baton, has emailed me.
He says "You might wish to correct your depiction of the DLA on your website, in order to support an accurate debate about these important issues".
Here are David Haggies's views:
From: DHaggie@nelsonthornes.com
To:
inclusive@inclusive.co.uk
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2002 10:10
AM
Subject: URGENT BBC support
I was interested to read your report on the BBC.
There are some facts of which you do not seem to be aware.
1.The Digital Learning Alliance is not comprised of one large and one small company. It includes the following:
BESA
ESPA (representing >100 software publishers)
EPC (representing 250 print publishers)
Reed Educational (the largest content supplier to UK education)
Pearson
RM
Granada Learning
Harper Collins (a division of News International)
Nelson Thornes (a division of Wolters Kluwer)
Crocodile Clips
Espresso
Oxford University Press
Channel 4.
2. Turnover in digital materials for schools is now £85m, CAGR forecast is 15%. Market development of this sort generates is potential investment comparable to that promised by the BBC. I don't think you're aware of the scale of plans that are now in development among the bigger companies. Of course the continuation of these plans depends on the continuing existence of a viable market, which is the issue in question here.
3. You present the argument as a choice between free BBC content in education, or no free BBC content in education. I suggest you would do well to consider that the BBC's itself has choices in serving education. They can serve education in many ways. It is not the case that the only valuable service they could put on is that outlined in their proposals. The question is whether this proposition is the right one for them to bring forward. The DLA (ie 90%+ of the industry) believes it is not - it would stem the flow of investment into schools and so reduce choice. The BBC needs to produce a proposition which would support education in the context of a thriving mixed economy. That is the issue not, as you put it, 'depriving them (schools) of resources altogether' but ensuring the fullest range of resources are available.
I hope this is helpful background. You might wish to correct your depiction of the DLA on your website, in order to support an accurate debate about these important issues.
With thanks
David Haggie
Business Development Director, Nelson
Thornes Ltd
01242 267377 (dir)
07764 961 932
(mob)
Dhaggie@Nelsonthornes.com