Research confirms big channel opportunity in education market

The opportunities for the channel in the education market have been confirmed in research. According to a survey of 350 teachers and over 1,000 students, technology continues to be seen as a “differentiator” in schools, colleges and universities across the UK.

Almost two thirds of respondents (62 percent) felt their organisation’s investment in technology helped them to stand out from the crowd. This differentiation is important, especially where educational institutions often have to compete for pupils.

Only 8 percent of teachers and 12 percent of students felt their organisation didn’t need to make any improvements to its technology over the next year, and the most popular request was for more up to date computers. This answer was given by 52 percent of teachers and 45 percent of students.

The pattern of desired improvements is very similar between teachers and students, something that is of great advantage to schools, colleges and universities who can potentially please two different groups with one adaptable solution.

The appetite for emerging technology trends, such as bring your own device (BYOD) and use of the cloud to access and store documents, is particularly demonstrative of this. For teachers, 26 percent wanted to see more use of the cloud, whilst 25 percent of students requested this. The trend shifts slightly for BYOD, with 15 percent of students and 14 percent of teachers citing BYOD.

A third of both teachers (34 percent) and students (33 percent) have a desire for better quality printing, making it the second most wished for technology improvement in the next year. Poor quality printing seems to be a particular problem in state schools with higher proportions of teachers and students looking for better quality compared to private schools.

Volumes of printing show no signs of decreasing in the education sector, despite attempts to increase digitisation, with 69 percent of teachers saying that on average they print more than 3,000 sheets of paper per term.

Eddie Ginja, head of technology and innovation at KYOCERA Document Solutions UK (which did the research), said: “It’s encouraging to see emerging technologies and processes being implemented to keep up with the fast-paced digital revolution.”

@AntonySavvas