The division that deals with technology infrastructure, software and services – including interactive classroom equipment, connectivity, networking software, school management software and support services.
This division focuses on products for use in the learning curriculum, trading as TTS, a company acquired in 2004. TTS supply educational resources from a number of third-party partners as well as having developed over 5,000 of their own resources – one of the best known and best selling being the Bee-Bot® programmable robot, designed to introduce learners to programming concepts.
RM previously offered products from other classroom resources firms it had acquired:
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SpaceKraft Ltd – developer and manufacturer of a range of sensory products. Acquired in 2007, sold back to original owners in 2016.
DACTA Ltd – distributor of educational products from LEGO, TOLO and BRIO. Acquired in 2007 and sold in 2012.
ISIS Concepts Ltd – a UK furniture manufacturer. Acquired in 2009 and sold in 2012.
Consortium – a stationery and supplies company, was acquired for £56 million in 2018. Despite substantial investment including a shared distribution factility with TTS and the launch of a new ecommerce website, ultimately the acquisition proved to not be profitable and ceased trading at the end of 2023.
RM Assessment
Deals with the process management and outsourcing for testing and qualifications; data analysis services for teachers, education managers and policy makers. Clients include Cambridge Assessment and the International Baccalaureate.
International operations
From the mid-1990s the company expanded overseas, with international revenues rising to 12% of the total group's revenue in 2009. A contraction in customer spending in RM's core UK education market and slow growth in the overseas businesses prompted it to divest several of them from 2010.
India
RM founded its subsidiary RM Education Solutions India in Thiruvananthapuram in 2003 to develop software and provide central corporate functions. In November 2016 it accounted for approximately 36% of the RM Group workforce.
Germany
In 1993 the company established a subsidiary in Soest, Germany, in order to sell a localized version of RM Net LM, a turnkey Local Area Network product for schools, consisting of file-servers running Microsoft LAN Manager, client PCs running Microsoft Windows 3.1 and including a suite of RM-developed network management applications. Despite a nationwide program of marketing seminars and three pilot sites, RM withdrew within two years.
United States
RM Educational Software, Inc. was established in 2005 to provide schools and districts in North America with many of the UK software products. It has been inactive since 2011.
In 2008 RM purchased and integrated the US interactive classroom provider Computrac and sold it at a loss in 2011.
Asia-Pacific
RM Asia-Pacific started operations in 1997. A head office was opened in Perth, Australia in February 1999 after being awarded a contract for schools information systems by the Education Department of Western Australia.
The company grew to employ 50 staff located in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Wellington (NZ), servicing over 4,000 schools across Australasia and in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore and Taipei.
RM Asia-Pacific was sold to Civica in 2011.
Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA)
In 2009 the company announced that it was expanding its business into the MENASA region with offices based in Dubai. The company stated that this would be a joint venture:
"RM MENASA will, through subsidiaries licensed to trade in each country, provide educational ICT products and services to schools in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA). It will be the exclusive distributor of RM's learning technologies products in the MENASA region."
This venture was closed down after 12 months.
Software
The company offered a range of educational software including the Kaleidos Virtual learning environment, MathsAlive, DiscoverAlive, Living Library and SuccessMaker, as well as an e-book library management system, RM Books, developed for the education market. They also package software titles from other companies to allow easy centralized installation on RM networks. In 2005 RM was awarded the contract for Glow (formally known as Scottish Schools Digital Network (SSDN) National Intranet project). Under the five-year, £37.5 million project, all 32 Local Authorities, over 3,000 schools and over 800,000 education users plus parents had access to Glow.
RM Education's proprietary software offerings are focused on cloud delivery – including RM Unify (IdP and SSO), RM Integris (School MIS), RM Finance, and RM Easimaths.
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