Contract Award

RM PLC
04 January 2006


       RM chosen by DfES for £16 million education data services contract

RM plc, the UK's leading supplier of information and communications technology
(ICT) and other services to education, has been awarded a £16 million education
data services contract by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). Under
the terms of the contract a consortium, led by RM, will collect and check the
data used to maintain the national pupil database and produce the annual
achievement and attainment tables for all schools in England.

RM-subsidiary Forvus has been responsible for producing the DfES' achievement
and attainment tables since 1995. This new contract, which was awarded following
a competitive procurement exercise, combines the work currently being performed
by Forvus with other data capture and cleaning work commissioned by the DfES.
The new approach is intended to provide a single more effective service and to
deliver efficiency gains for the DfES. The use of sophisticated management
information and performance data is increasingly seen by educationalists and
policy makers as an important tool for driving forward educational standards.

Commenting, Tim Pearson, RM's CEO, said:

'The role of ICT in education is much wider than simply supporting classroom
delivery. As well as being a leading provider of educational ICT infrastructure
and content, this contract, which brings together the UK's leading education
data specialists, confirms RM's position as the UK's expert provider of
sophisticated education data services.

'Together with the RAISEonline project, which we are also delivering, this
contract shows how the provision of timely and accurate performance data can
help educators improve the quality of education.'

                                    - Ends -

For further information, please contact:

Mike Greig/Phil Hemmings, RM plc                         08709 200200
Fiona Laffan/Mark Antelme, Brunswick                     020 7404 5959

Notes to Editors:

The RM consortium includes: Forvus: RM's specialist data management subsidiary;
SERAP, part of the University of Bath; and the Fischer Family Trust, a
charitable trust engaged in education improvement.

The new contract brings together three data services activities that were
previously handled separately: sourcing assessment and performance data from
more than 50 separate organisations and agencies; matching this data to uniquely
identifiable pupils; and producing the data for publication in the annual
achievement and attainment tables.

RAISEonline is a project RM is delivering on behalf of Ofsted and the DfES.
RAISEonline will merge and replace Ofsted's PANDA and DfES's PAT. The unified
approach provides Inspectors, schools, Local Authorities and School Improvement
Partners (SIPS) with a flexible online tool for exploring and interrogating
performance data to support self evaluation and inform school improvement.




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