So how big is the K-12 education marketplace, really? Depends on who you ask, according to several researchers here at the SIIA Ed-Tech Industry Summit who presented data they’d collected about the question.
Robert Resnick, president of Education Market Research, said through surveys of educators as well as education companies, his company found that the K-12 education market, including textbooks, technology, supplemental materials, and assessments, totals about $18.3 billion, up from $17.3 billion last fiscal year. Resnick estimates that the market at this point for digital content is about $2 billion.
While the education market generally is a “slow and steady” on, without wild yearly changes, several sub-segments of the market have increased over the past year, including reading and mathematics intervention products, online/digital content, instructional software, and productivity tool software, Resnick added. He also singled out the interactive whiteboard segment of the market, which totals about $2.2 billion, the majority of which are SMARTboards.
John Richards, the president of Consulting Services for Education, presented the results of his company’s survey of the K-12 education market, which found that the technology segment of the market totaled around $7.5 billion in 2009-10, which includes content, instructional support, platforms and administrative tools, and “special markets” such as special education. This year’s version of the survey is still collecting data for those of you reading this who work managing ed-tech companies.