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The UK government has started to interfere with textbook publishing in a “narrow and constrictive” way, leaving the educational publishing industry “reeling”, the m.d. of Collins Learning has warned.
Colin Hughes, who joined the HarperCollins division in 2012, said the government now recognises the importance of good quality textbooks in the classroom (after a 30 to 40-year period when textbook use was discouraged) but is abusing its power by telling [teachers] which books they should use.
“The main way in which this has taken shape is the Maths Mastery programme in primary schools, which the minister involved wanted to push as an approach,” he said. “As it happens I agree with him but where are we? Out of numerous good schemes that were submitted for approval only two have been approved. There is no reason why other schemes are being rejected.
“It’s a scandalous abuse of government power. [The educational publishing industry] has always been alarmed about the possibility of government approval of educational content in the UK and by heaven we were right.”
The government is currently developing an online platform of approved curriculum content and publishers are not being consulted, he said. “We have half a dozen internationally top-tier educational publishing outfits in this country, arguably more, and in any other country the government would ask how this could be done in the best possible way. But that’s not happening because [politicians] are being driven by this dogmatic idea that we don’t know what we are doing, which is nonsense.”
This drive to control educational resources for schools is coming at at time when schools are suffering the effects of austerity, said Hughes, who thinks the government’s claim that schools are adequately funded is just “nonsense”. Textbooks and educational resources, including digital tools, are one of the first things to go, he said, pointing out that last September the Educational Publishers Council (EPC) reported a 60% decline in digital spend with publishers.
Another stark decline is in schools buying revision books. “We’ve seen a huge leap in the number of schools saying ‘we are not buying revision books any more’.” said Hughes. “Schools are now completely open to the idea that parents buy the books. I think it’s gobsmacking.”
When asked how the market for digital educational content will develop, Hughes said schools may have reached saturation point. Sophisticated solutions to real problems will still find
an audience, he said, citing the success of Satchel, software that helps teachers manage homework provision. “Teachers have, however, looked at things like personalised learning platforms and have decided not to bother.
“Teachers and pupils are also less interested in mobiles being used as educational tools than the industry might once have thought. Kids say they use their smartphones for entertainment and contacting friends, not for work, and many teachers want to steer pupils away from screens.
“A classic example would be augmented reality, waving mobiles over books,” he said. “Everyone was really excited about that but it came at a price and was really irritating in the classroom.”
Collins Learning has annual revenues of £50m and, despite the problems with the UK educational market, international business is thriving, said Hughes, who during his time with HarperCollins has expanded into the Gulf, China, India, the Caribbean and other territories.
“The UK education industry generally is preposterously successful. Arguably the best single export we have is our own language and lessons taught in English are growing at a staggering rate around the world as developing countries get richer,” he said. “Parents want their children to go to university where they study in English either in the US or the UK or Australia and, even if they stay at home, as in China, the parents still want them to speak fluent English by the time they leave university.”
Parents in these countries would be “shocked” if their child was not given textbooks to use and schools are reluctant to move too far into the digital arena, he pointed out. “Occasionally ministers in other countries will ask ‘why hasn’t everything gone digital?’ but you desperately want to say ‘please don’t do that, look at where all this has got to in other societies, you’re going to spend an enormous amount of time and money and achieve very little.”
Looking forward, Hughes wants to continue with Collins’ international expansion, particularly in Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia, and will continue to form partnerships in China. Collins became a Cambridge Endorsed provider several years ago so that will power a lot of future growth, as will the “insatiable” appetite worldwide for reading programmes in both first and second languages.
This international push will come despite the government interfering with business at home. He was keen to stress that the dialogue between publishers and ministers is friendly and that publishers want to work together but added: “It’s really weird for a Conservative government to be, in our view, hampering the export potential of our industry by battering it in the way they are. We have a terrifically successful international educational business and yet we have our own ministers picking away at it... There is huge potential [internationally] and we will get on with it massively unaided by domestic government.”