‘The Big Bang’ feature is certainly going to be a highlight of the show, which has been put on in conjunction with the Science Association, and is designed to make science ‘fashionable’ once again for both teachers and pupils. Hopefully ‘The Big Bang’ will create a real buzz in the exhibition giving school suppliers lots of happy potential customers to talk to.

The show is expected to pull in the region of 15,000 visitors through it’s doors during its 3 day run, and has over 600 exhibitors in attendance.

Interestingly the organisers claim that on average each visitor has £3,988 to spend, accumulating to over £59m, which on the face of it is fantastic news for school suppliers that are showcasing their products and services.

What will be interesting to see is whether the show can still pull the same visitor numbers as it has in previous years, and whether schools are still in a position to spend the same sort of sums they have in the past. With many trade events this year having drops of between 15-25% in visitor numbers, the real test will be whether the guys at Emap have done enough to persuade people to make the trip to The Education Show.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, who have been tasked with finding potential investors for Expresso have been in contact with a number of interested parties, but Pearson, owner of Penguin books and The FT have emerged as hot favourite, in a bid to strengthen their publishing arm and move further into multimedia delivery.

Espresso is looking for additional cash to fund international growth of their core multimedia service. Chief executive Lewis Bronze, company co-founder, is positive about the move:

This is a highly positive development in the company’s evolution and I am fully committed to driving it forward, and key to that is getting the right partner. We have a unique service and we want to take the company to more places around the world.

Despite the fact that Espresso is already moving into international markets, the company feels it needs the ability to grow rapidly to take advantage of opportunities while they are available. With many international Government’s now cottoning onto digital cirricilum delivery, Espresso feels it needs to move fast to secure strong market positions that mirror its standing in the UK education industry.

Among those nominated were a number of School Suppliers Directory listed suppliers, and we wish them the very best of luck.

The Education Resources Awards highlight the quality and diversity of educational products and resources, excellent educational establishments and the most dedicated members of the teaching profession and supplies industry, all working together to encourage the very best in education.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony at The National Motorcycle Museum, Birmingham on Friday 27th March.

Click here to view the shortlist of nominations.

The survey, carried out annually by Pearson Phoenix at the BETT Show revealed that 45% of respondents felt interoperability between applications was a top priority, with 37% choosing reporting and just 18% putting administration at the top of the list.

The results indicate that schools are favouring software and applications that can be ‘joined-up’ reducing the need to duplicate admin tasks and for additional data entry.

Headway has been made by Becta to standardise interoperability through the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), which’ll become become the standard framework for all MIS systems by 2010 to allow integration with other applications to be quick and easy.

These changes may require some school software suppliers to make changes to their current products, which could be a complex and expensive task. However, in the long run it appears to be a positive move to improve the level of intergration between systems and therefore ultimately benefiting the end users!

The badge, which organisations and venues are being encouraged to apply for recognises safe working practices and educational value. Under the scheme, organisations will display the badge as a signal to schools that their venue has met the required standard, so teachers do not need to carry out their own risk or quality assessments.

Children’s Secretary Ed Balls said:

Educational visits are among the most memorable experiences in a child’s school life. I want to see schools taking advantage of the opportunities that learning outside the classroom provides to bring subjects to life.

Quality Badges offer teachers a guarantee that not only is a venue providing the sort of educational value that they can build on in class long after the visit but they also have the appropriate risk management structures in place.

Organisations can apply for a badge via the Quality Badge website and follow one of two application routes. Low-risk venues such as museums, places of worship and art galleries are able to apply via Route 1 which involves completing an online self-evaluation form. Other venues that carry much higher risks, such as outdoor activity centres, beaches and farms will follow route 2 and are to be assessed by independent awarding bodies, which will look in detail at their safety management systems before awarding the organisation with the Quality Badge.

The cost of the badge for Route 1 applications is £100, payable online when submitting the self evaluation form. The cost for Route 2 applications is anywhere between £60 – £750, dependant on the relevant awarding body.

Overall, the scheme is designed to get more pupils out on school trips and learning outside the classroom, whilst cutting the red tape and paperwork involved for teachers. It’s been welcomed by teachers’ unions and school suppliers alike, and is set to dramatically increase the number of educational visits being offered by schools.

More information for suppliers can be found here: www.lotcqualitybadge.org.uk

The cash is to be spent on refurbishing sports surfaces and facilities, including adding flood lights and all-weather astro pitches to enable facilities to be used during the evenings and in the winter months. Ed Balls commented:

2008 will always be remembered as a fantastic year for sport. We all enjoyed the remarkable achievements by Team GB at the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing. But it was also a remarkable year for sports colleges, PE and school sport.

The announce will come as good news for PE suppliers who have seen a drastic downturn in the volume of orders in recent months. Ed Balls added:

I am delighted to announce that our massive investment in school sport continues today with a further £21 million to be shared between 75 sports colleges. I know that this investment will make a real difference across the country.

Ed Balls made the announcement at the opening day of the Sports Colleges Conference yesterday.

Check our list of Key Dates for School Suppliers for details of other conferences, exhibitions and events coming up.

School Closures

The news this week has been palgued with reports of hundreds, if not thousands of school closures throughout the UK due to the severe weather conditions, but what sort of knock on effect is this having on the education industry and school suppliers?

Following the post Christmas sales slump, these few crucial weeks before half term and normally fairly busy, with schools spending the last of their annual budgets before March/April.

Whilst it’s great that everyone is outdoors enjoying the wintry weather, many school suppliers are sitting at their desks, twiddling their thumbs.

Hopefully this weather won’t continue into next week, and everyone can get back to some work!

To give you a bit of a helping hand, away from the hard pressing sales men and women bombarding you with reasons as to why you should exhibit, we’ve asked Sandra from Fantasy Couriers to share her experiences of this year’s event.

Name: Sandra Patterson
Position: Managing Director
Company: Fantasy Couriers

What is it that you do?
It’s an Online Business Simulation Game, set in the Courier Industry so it’s very accessible for all students.  Students start as a “white van man” and then have to grow their business, take on employees, vehicles, premises, even buy out competitors.  It is a web based game, and so can be played from anywhere, and uses a competitive fantasy league environment to keep up the competitiveness and the fun.

Is this your first year exhibiting at BETT?
Yes

What were your overall impressions of the event?
Very well organised, very well marketed, worthwhile and value for money.  We are Scottish based so the costs for us would be higher than most when travel and accommodation etc are all included.

Would you say the event represented good value for money?
We chose London over the Scottish learning Festival (Scottish Equivalent) in SECC, as the space prices were virtually identical, but London has a far larger footfall, and more exhibitors.  A far better event.

What sort of response did you get from potential customers?
Very good, positive feedback, good interest, a large number of enquiries and demo account requests.

Will you be exhibiting again at BETT?
Probably.  As the game has a number of different markets we need to advertise into we just need to make sure that other advertising for the non-school side of our business doesn’t require more funds/attention.

What was the approximate total cost of the event?
We had a total budget of £5k.  Approx £3k of that was the stand & space, other costs were the internet connection, printing, furniture hire, LCD hire, accommodation, food, petrol, parking etc.

What would your top three tips be for anyone planning to exhibit in the future?

1. Comfortable shoes
2. Don’t lose your voice on the first day
3. Buy all of your food from the little Turkish sandwich bar over the road from the main entrance, much cheaper and much friendlier.

For more information on Fantasy Couriers, an Online Business Simulation Game please visit the website: www.fantasycouriers.com

Data security in schools

The TES today reported that at least 20 schools in and around the UK have have their websites hacked and content replaced with hardcore porn.

All the sites were running the out of date versions of the popular open source VLE Moodle.

Whilst it’s important to stress that the schools firewall’s would have blocked any such content being viewable from within the schools, it does somewhat dent the reputation and creditability of the website providers and schools involved.

However, there is a much wider issue here that needs to be addressed. As more and more applications, services and software products aimed at the education market head towards web-based formats, encompassing the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model, suppliers need to treat data and system security as a top priority. SaaS products are really leading innovation and progress in the education software market at the moment, and it’s great to see. They have some real benefits over traditional desktop based applications, and can be delivered at a fraction of the cost. It will be a great shame for schools to have to shy away from these products due to concerns over data security.

This isn’t an issue specific to the education industry; just this week Sage, the accountancy software giant has had to temporarily pull the plug on it’s new web-based accounting software due to serious security issues.

The ball is very much now in the software supplier’s court, to further improve on data security, as without doing so, schools will have no option but to stick with traditional, desktop based software for the forseeable future – which’ll be a terrible blow to the industry.

February
11 & 12th  –  Northern Education Technology Show, Newcastle
11 & 12th – The Building Schools Exhibition and Conference, Manchester Central
9 – 13th – February Half Term (Scottish Schools)
16- 20th -  February Half Term

March
13 – 15th  -  ASCL Annual Conference, Birmingham
23 – 25th – Computers & Learning Conference, Brighton
26 – 28th   -  The Education Show, NEC Birmingham
27th – Education Resources Awards 2009, Birmingham

April
6 – 17th  -  Easter holidays
24 & 25  -  Early Years & Primary Teaching Show, Manchester
24 & 25th – Special Needs North, Manchester

May
1 – 3rd  -  NAHT Annual Conference, Brighton
4 – 8th -  May Half Term (Scottish schools)
25 – 29th  -  May Half Term

June
26 & 27th  -  The Childcare & Nursery Show, Olympia London
29th – Summer Holidays begin (Scottish schools)

July & August
23rd July  -  Summer Holidays begin
18th August – Autumn Term begins (Scottish schools)

September
2nd  -  Autumn Term begins
23 & 24th – Scottish Learning Festival, Glasgow

October
2 – 3rd – TES Education Show, London Olympia
12 – 23rd – October Half Term (Scottish Schools)
16 – 17th  -  Special Needs London, London
26 – 30th – October Half Term

November
12 & 13th  -  National Association of School Business Management Annual Conference, Leicester
19 – 21st  -  Design & Technology with ICT Education Show, NEC Birmingham
26 & 27th – Specialist Schools and Academies Trust Annual Conference, ICC Birmingham

December
21st  -  Christmas holidays begin