Our
Story
From our humble beginnings as a pioneer of education technology in 1973, to the go-to partner of choice for thousands of schools across the UK today, our core vision has endured.
Helping teachers to teach and learners to learn.
We achieve this through the design and supply of the essential technology ‘building blocks’ involved in running a school, with all the support and expertise to go with it. We strive every day to make school life easier and more rewarding through technology solutions that make the best possible impact on educational opportunities.
Helping schools save
time, save money and
improve the impact of
technology on teaching
and learning.
We achieve this through the design and supply of the essential technology ‘building blocks’ involved in running a school, with all the support and expertise to go with it. We strive every day to make school life easier and more rewarding through technology solutions that make the best possible impact on educational opportunities.
View our products and servicesHelping make
technology work
for your teaching
and learning needs
We aim to keep things simple with all of our products and services.
Take our fully scalable IT support service for example. We work with thousands of schools across the UK each year to deliver a rich array of IT support services, cloud technologies and software solutions to help look after the school’s infrastructure, so teaching staff don't have to spend time on this.
We are also the UK’s only dedicated educational ISP for schools. More and more schools are switching to our broadband solutions each year, making us both the fastest-growing and number one supplier of super-fast, robust and safe internet connections to schools*.
An increasing number of schools are also opting to join our growing community of happy MIS adopters. RM Integris saves hours and hours for the school office, making light work of high volumes of school data and reporting. Each year, we welcome over 1400 of our RM Integris schools to one of over 40 local Insights Meetups where we offer free help, advice and opportunities to share feedback and help shape future developments of our user-friendly and low-cost alternative to SIMS.
Our team includes practitioners from education, and all of our customers are invited to our bi-annual free Seminars – now in their 25th anniversary year – and other CPD and thought-leadership events to share the latest best practice and access to a wealth of support, inspiration and ideas.
Our
People
RM Education has a heritage dating back 45 years, and currently supports over 7,000 schools in the UK, employing over 800 people with a third of these operating from our captive organisation in India. Guiding the strategy to deliver this growth is a new management team.
Senior Leadership team
Steve Burnett
Managing Director
Steve was reappointed as Managing Director for RM Education in January 2020. He is responsible for the financial performance of this £70m division of RM plc, meeting the needs of its 7,000 customers, and developing the 800+ employees who work for RM Education.
Steve has most recently led the transition and integration of Melbourne-based SoNET Systems into sister company, RM Results. Prior to that he held this same role – as MD of RM Education – for 18 months from November 2017. Steve is an experienced executive and non-executive director with significant experience in board level positions in the Information Technology and Business Services industries, building, leading and transforming ventures across Europe, having worked extensively in the Nordics, Benelux, Germany, France, Czech Republic and Italy including country Chief Executive roles in Norway, Netherlands and Czech Republic. In these positions he has operated in the Education, Energy and Utilities, Finance and Public Sector.
Craig Lewendon
Finance Director
Craig joined RM Group in 2016 as Group Financial Controller, and has been Finance Director for RM Education since May 2018. Prior to this he undertook a secondment as Finance Director for sister company RM Resources, successfully integrating and driving the synergy benefits from the acquisition of The Consortium in 2017.
Craig is a Chartered Accountant with significant experience in senior finance positions in a number of sectors, ranging from Man-Guarding Security, and BMS Systems, through to technology and software in the Banking and Retail/Entertainment spaces. Prior to joining RM, Craig served as Group Financial Controller at Omnico Limited, a company founded via the Private Equity purchase of separate software and hardware groups servicing the Retail and Entertainment sector. Craig led the projects to combine back office functions and implement a worldwide SAP installation, covering UK, Europe, Asia, Australia and the US operations.
Rosie Reed
HR Business Partner
Rosie joined RM Education in the summer of 2019, as HR Business Partner. In this role she is responsible for supporting RM Education’s operational and commercial teams in achieving their strategic objectives, by identifying, managing and developing talent across the 500-person company – from graduates through to experienced professionals.
Prior to this, Rosie spent 8 years in Australia, in a number of HR roles across the public healthcare system, culminating in managing the medical workforce of a 900-bed teaching hospital in Brisbane. She returned to the UK in 2016 as Head of People Operations for a leading international summer school provider, before joining RM Education in her current role, earlier this year.
Jayne Davies
Services Director
Jayne was appointed Services Director for RM Education in July 2018. As the Services Director, Jayne is responsible for the financial performance of the largest Business Unit within RM Education – with annual revenues of £48m per annum, by meeting the needs of the 3,000 customers and developing the 250 employees who work within the Services directorate.
She leads the Account Management and Key Account teams, providing hundreds of schools with both Managed and Support Services. Customers range from Strategic Council/Local Authority-wide programmes, through to individual schools; and the services offered cover all educational technology solutions across the breadth of the RM Education portfolio – from within the Services, Digital Platforms and Connectivity service lines. Half of the employees within Jayne’s directorate are Customer Support Engineers, who ensure that IT ‘just works’ for teachers and learners; ensuring customers have swift, safe and reliable access to their files and engaging media rich resources, both inside and out of school. Delivering “best in class” Customer Service is at the heart of the RM delivery model and all roles have a very real and positive impact on enabling the delivery of the very best education for pupils.
Jayne joined RM plc as a Graduate in 1994 and during her early career has worked in Sales and Account Management roles across the business. She has been a Director within RM Education since 2013, holding Directorate positions in both operational and commercial business units.
John Srawley
Head of Connectivity Services
John heads up the RM Education Connectivity Services business – providing fully managed ISP and connectivity services to primary and secondary schools across the UK. He is responsible for the financial and operational performance of this important pillar of RM Education’s business, providing safe, secure and reliable internet connections for over 3,200 customers right across the UK.
John joined RM Education in 2009 and was promoted to the Senior Leadership team in 2018. Prior to his current role, John ran the RM Education Hardware business, where he was responsible for the end to end management and delivery of the P&L including partner, product, commercial and sales strategy. Before this, John ran the Procurement function, where he was responsible for managing the strategic selection and negotiation of large value goods and services contracts worth tens of millions of pounds per annum.
James Browning
Head of Digital Platforms
James joined RM Education in 2007, gaining experience across a variety of strategic, operational, sales and product based roles across the RM organisation, including 3 years in and out of schools on a daily basis helping him understand the reality of school life and the challenges our education sector regularly faces. Most recently James has taken the helm of RM Education’s Digital Platforms Business. He and his team are driving a strategy focused on growing RM Education’s software offering to help leaders, teachers and learners improve outcomes and achieve their goals.
He is fanatical about Education Technology and the difference it can make, and outside of work James is a Board Director and Trustee of Abingdon Learning Trust, a Multi-Academy Trust established by local schools working together and taking charge of our own destiny. He also takes a keen interest in investing in technology start-ups.
Simon Carter
Marketing and Propositions Director
Simon was appointed Marketing and Propositions Director for RM Education in January 2019. He is responsible for the RM Education brand, its reputation in the market, RM Education’s customer proposition and – as part of the Senior Leadership Team – the future direction of the business.
He has held senior marketing and commercial roles, for brands as disparate as Fujitsu, Thomas Cook, the Post Office, Virgin, EdF Energy and NatWest Bank. Prior to joining RM plc, he spent two years pursuing an independent career as Interim Marketing Director for the travel brand, Wendy Wu Tours; Interim Strategy Director for the UK’s largest Health & Safety brand, Arco Ltd; and before that as Interim CEO of strategic communications research consultancy, ComRes. Simon is a Non-Executive Director for Coventry University, is a Liveryman for the Worshipful Company of Marketors, a Freeman of the City of London, and was a columnist for the magazine, Marketing Week, for 4 years.
Tony Byers
Sales Director
Tony was appointed as Sales Director for RM Education in January 2020. He is responsible for taking RM Education’s value proposition to market via new customer acquisition, existing customer retention and the renewal (and extension) of all revenue streams.
Tony has significant experience leading commercial and client facing functions, in organisation design, deal governance and remuneration, and has built and managed high performing sales teams, winning and retaining clients with transactional values as great as £300m in a single contract. He has held a number of senior roles in multiple service sectors – as Sales Director for Iron Mountain Europe, building their sales and account management functions at a time of steep growth and acquisition of competitors; as Managing Director of Balfour Beatty’s Business Services division, running a £60m P&L of Central Government clients in the early years of austerity; and more recently in interim commercial leadership positions in Private Equity-backed Tech businesses.
Helen Walker
Integrated Service Delivery Director
Helen joined RM Education in January 2020. She is leading operations, serving the needs of our 7,000 customers through a highly experienced and expert team of technical and service delivery people across the UK and India.
As a former teacher and governor, Helen is passionate about the potential of education and technology to transform people’s lives and improve social equality. She joined from the Department for Education, where as Chief Technology Officer, she was responsible for all internal and sector-facing technology services. She led an ambitious 2-year Modernisation Programme to upgrade the Department’s systems and services, migrating the full estate to cloud and providing users with seamless connectivity and mobile devices. She then went on to deliver digital transformation at scale – exploiting and optimising cloud environments to design better user services, building specialist capability and driving down costs.
Mohan Sreekumar
Head of RM Education, India
Mohan is part of RM Education Solutions India Pvt. Ltd and heads the RM Education Division there. He has been working with RM for more than 2 years and manages the development and operational teams delivering products and remote services for the full range of RM Education’s customers – from individual schools to large Multi Academy Trusts.
Mohan is an experienced Delivery and Operational leader, bringing many years of rich experience in global delivery, account management and people development. Prior to RM, he spent many years with companies including Capgemini, UST Global, Mindtree, and Alstom. His career has spanned a number of sectors – Digital, Retail, Utilities, Healthcare and Education and he has been responsible for integrated global delivery of software solutions and services to customers across the globe.