Retail - Educational Software: Learn Baby Learn
As parents splash out on computers to help their children?s education, there is a big market for the right software, says Andrew Charlesworth
Education is a hot political subject. It has been for years. It got hotter in those last few days before the general election and will probably stay hot now the election is over.
Politicians of all colours adopted education as their issue, but parents aren?t convinced that schools are doing a good job (unless they have forked out #1,500 a term, in which case they have to tell themselves it?s worth it).
The Tory answer to education was to test the children to death with more SATs (Student Aptitude Tests). The Lib-Dems said they would raise income tax by a penny a pound to pay for better education. At last year?s Labour Party conference, Tony Blair declared his top three priorities were ?education, education and education?. Admittedly, catching Tory ministers with brown envelopes stuffed full of used readies took on a degree of urgency, but education remained high on the political agenda.
Now Blair is prime minister, he is unlikely to find the money to provide every sprog with a satchel-based computer and comprehensive suite of educational software. So retail demand for educational software is likely to rise as IT usage at school increases.
In the meantime, the press is still scaring parents with a steady stream of stories about declining standards in schools. Parents are worried. Are teachers doing their job properly?
The past 18 years of Tory government may have been characterised by death by a thousand cuts, but since the beginning of the 90s, some of the money in brown envelopes has been finding its way into IT in schools.
A recent study of G7 countries showed that the UK had the most computers per 100 pupils in secondary schools and the third highest number in primary schools after the US and Canada.
Central government has been spending almost #200 million annually on computers for schools, via the local educational authorities.
The Department of Education?s 1995 statistical bulletin shows that the average expenditure on IT in primary schools in the 1993-94 academic year was #5,650 per school, or about #32 per pupil, compared with #2,600 per school in 1991-92 and a miserly #300 per school in 1984-85.
In secondary schools the average expenditure on IT was #23,950 per school, or about #29 per pupil in 1993-94, compared with #15,450 per school in 1991-92 and #2,250 in 1984-85.
What all this means is that 94 per cent of children in full-time primary and secondary education are getting regular (that is, more than weekly) hands-on contact with IT.
But further research by the National Council for Educational Technology (NCET) shows that the PCs in schools are, on average, six years old. Despite all the spending, IT still only accounts for 0.86 per cent of educational expenditure. NCET research also shows that the percentage of teachers using IT regularly in their lessons has remained static since 1989 at 34 per cent in secondary schools and 56 per cent in primary schools.
NCET has come to the fore recently because of the political debate over education generally and specifically over IT in education. Officials at NCET are keen to point out that technology per se should not be seen as a panacea for all ills in education. If children cannot construct basic sentences and do basic maths, then all the technology that money can buy won?t benefit them at all.
There have been calls from many quarters recently ? the CSSA, computer companies, even Bill Gates and Andy Grove ? for increased spending on IT in education and training.
No matter how much money is spent on IT in schools, it still isn?t money in the pockets of retailers and dealers. Most school?s hardware and software is obtained direct or through specialist educational resellers.
But the increased emphasis on IT at school does have a beneficial spin-off for the high street. Familiarity with computers at school makes it more likely that the PC will be used at home. If the children are not beating a path to the retailer?s door, the parents very likely will, in the hope of securing their little darlings that all-important edge over their classmates.
A generation of children have grown up with a VCR as child-minder. Now it?s the turn of the PC to babysit, limited to the middle-class children whose parents can afford one. The kind of parents who can afford to buy a PC for the home probably don?t have the time to spend tutoring their children after hours themselves, so they turn to the computer to do it for them.
Education, or ?giving my child a head start? has become the prime motivator in buying a PC, so it is natural that educational software packages should be high on the parent?s shopping lists when it comes to buying additional software.
?Will educational software ever be as big as the games market? I doubt it,? says Kingsley Bishop, marketing manager at Ablac Learning Works. ?But the political focus on literacy and numeracy and educational standards generally, combined with increased home ownership of PCs, means it is a rising market.?
Educational software is not as exciting as entertainment software ? there seems to be an unwritten rule which associates worthiness with dullness ? but it is a steady seller. Unlike a game, where triple A can so easily turn into tripe with a capital T, a retailer is unlikely to be left with boxes of an educational title languishing on the shelf.
When Reading-based dealer Computer Care South refurbished its high street premises earlier this year, it axed its racks of games software, but kept the educational and reference titles for exactly this reason.
?Once a game is out of the top 10 who wants it?? asks Robin Sasson, Computer Care South general manager. ?My technical people are better employed building PCs, not configuring memory for games.?
Multiple retailers regularly offer deep discounts on games titles, even from the day of launch, in the hope of attracting greater footfall, but educational titles generally retain their full RRP. ?If you deal in pennies you make pennies,? says Sasson.
Games are exciting but risky and don?t go down well with parents, who tend to be the ones who pay for the software. Educational titles are duller and sell slowly, but they are a hit with guilt-ridden parents who want to compensate for the hours their child spends on screen-based entertainment by purchasing something worthy.
Smart publishers have realised this and, although the in-store packaging is often aimed at attracting the child, the main marketing message ? in press advertising and in-store ? is aimed squarely at the parents? paranoia.
?Your child can be a genius? says Europress, the subtext being ?or a complete dunce if you don?t buy him/her this software?.
?Do you know how well your child is doing at school?? asks 10 Out of 10, the subtext being ?don?t risk leaving it up to those flaky teachers?.
Then again, anything which encourages parents to be concerned about their children?s education and general mental capacities probably has a positive net effect.
?We?re great ones for jumping on an approaching bandwagon,? says Europress PR manager Don Lewis. ?When the government launched Back to Basics, we brought out the Genius range. The SATs titles were ready to sell as attention focused on the latest schools? league tables. If newspapers scare parents by telling them that their children can?t spell as well as children in Holland or Japan, they want to go out and buy educational software. We?re there to supply that need.?
Parents are the primary target for Broderbund?s marketing too. The company which claims to have invented the edutainment genre sees brand-building as more important than marketing any single title.
?It?s the brand which sells the titles to parents,? says Rebecca Lester, Broderbund marketing manager. ?They trust us.?
In October last year, Broderbund launched its Parents? Guides which provide useful and comforting information for parents which they can peruse away from the PC (thereby catering for parents who want their children to be comfortable with technology even if it scares the hell out of the parents).
Europress claims it has the market leading educational software with its Fun School primary level series, now in its sixth generation, which has shipped 1.7 million units worldwide. The company also produces titles specifically for the SATs.
?The SATs titles give the parent an idea of how the child has progressed at school in relation to the National Curriculum ? and how well the teacher has measured up too,? says Lewis.
Europress? secondary level educational package, GCSE Maths, managed a brief appearance in the Elspa software charts within two weeks of its launch recently, alongside hit games, which gives an indication of how popular educational software has become. GCSE English and science titles are planned for imminent release.
Despite its roots in educational software, the genre is no longer Europress? primary money earner. Turnover at the Cheshire-based publisher grew by 300 per cent in 1996 to #9.7 million, and is expected to double again this year. But this is on the back of a rapidly expanding entertainment portfolio, and educational titles now bring in about 35 per cent of Europress? revenue.
Ablac is 20 years old this year and education still accounts for 90 per cent of its titles, if not 90 per cent of its profits. It has a long history of supplying software to schools and maintains strong links with them.
Part of its sales pitch is the Home & School Learning Link. When parents buy an Ablac title they get a voucher which they give to their children?s school to redeem against more Ablac software. It?s the software publisher?s equivalent of the supermarket voucher system for schools. The Ablac titles also have an individual record-keeping function which allows children or parents to track progress.
Both Ablac and Broderbund see selling software into schools as a useful tool for driving retail sales of their titles.
?Schools provide a captive audience,? says Lester.
Broderbund launched teachers? packs in November which provide information on how to use Broderbund titles for best effect in the classroom.
The Broderbund character Carmen (from Where in the World is Carmen Diego?) found success in the US originally because it was adopted by teachers to assist classroom learning. Then the kids went home and told their PC-owning parents what a great time they?d had. Consequently, Carmen sold bucket loads.
But there are numerous companies jumping on the educational bandwagon and established players complain that there are too many low-budget titles on the market. Unlike entertainment software, educational titles rarely die, they just get cheaper. The earlier versions of Fun School have just joined Europress? new Q range of budget software which was launched in February and sells for #9.99 a pop in crystal cases. The other packages in Q include the Genius range, three back-to-basics numeracy and literacy titles and the new SATs titles. Without this move, Europress alone would have been fielding 13 full-price primary-age titles.
The picture is further complicated by numerous publishers whose roots lie in entertainment rather than education, but which retain, or have developed, edutainment titles, for example Sierra?s Adi range. And into which category, for example, would a Disney story book title fall? Or Encarta 97?
It is so blurred because there is no ?approved? status for educational titles. ?Supports National Curriculum? and ?Supports Key Stage 1 & 2? are splashed liberally over the packaging. But maybe there?s elements of Sonic 3D which support Key Stage 1.
National Curriculum approval is not necessarily a sign of a good product, in fact it could mean an outstandingly dull one. But sound educational content and English localisation is important, which is why Broderbund trades so heavily on its brand name.
Confused parents often turn to teachers for advice, which is why the educational soft- ware publishers are keen to keep or establish contacts with schools.
Smart retailers will take the same line. Team up with the local school, Cubs or Brownies, anywhere that children and their parents can be reached.
It doesn?t take a genius to realise that educational software will continue to grow.
Entertainment versus education
Striking a balance between educational content and the ability to entertain children is one of the key issues educational publishers have to anguish over. Too heavy on the educational side and children are reluctant to use the software, seeing it as an extension of school. But bury the educational message too deeply in games and parents become suspicious of the title?s worthiness
?If you don?t sustain the child?s interest then the product is worthless,? says Broderbund?s Rebecca Lester. ?You need rewarding elements to give the child encouragement and make them feel as if they are achieving something.?
Ablac holds the exclusive UK licence for Davidson titles, designed by teachers in the US.
?The critical thing is not if a product captivates a child for the first 10 minutes, but to go back six months later and see if the child is still using it,? says Ablac?s Kingsley Bishop.