RM scoops £16m Pathfinder education deal

Educational ICT specialist RM has scooped the first of four contracts that aim to bring innovation in IT to schools - and it has been named as sole bidder for a second in Lambeth.

In the £16m, eight-year PFI contract with Warwickshire LEA, RM will provide more than 1,500 teachers with wireless tablet PCs. Classrooms will also be provided with digital projectors and RM will manage an authority-wide network and portal.

Phil Hemmings, RM director of investor relations, said: "The tablets will be used as personal productivity tools by the teachers: to prepare lessons, assessments, and access data and material - for all of the many jobs a teacher has to do as well as actually teaching."

The teachers will also be provided with RM's Kaleidos, which is a virtual teaching and learning environment. Through the managed network, which makes use of a net already in place, they will be able to access material, communicate with other schools in the LEA and collect their email.

Each of the four Pathfinder projects aims to try out different approaches to improving education through ICT. The project in Lambeth will see a large number of students and teachers issued with laptops. In the Newham project, those pupils and teachers involved will be given the laptops.

Hemmings said that RM had not bid for the fourth contract, at Wolverhampton and Worcestershire, as the requirements were outside its experience and expertise.