Journal Article

School Market Size, Growth and the Shift to Digital Resources in K-12 Classrooms

Resnick, Robert M.

2011

Overview

The K-12 instructional materials market, including textbooks, supplemental materials, and digital resources, totaled $16.4 billion in sales in the 2009–2010 school year. It is projected that sales in 2010–2011 will be $17.3 billion, a 5.3% year-to-year increase. There has been a slow down in this market, starting in 2006–2007 and intensifying in 2008–2009, yet the K-12 school market continues to grow at a steady pace despite fluctuations in the U.S. economy. The fundamental fact that student enrollment and per pupil expenditures continue to increase assures us that the K-12 market continues to grow, but it also reinforces the fact that recent years were not banner years for educational publishers. Looking at sales of particular categories of educational products, it is easy to see that the technology-related resources led the pack in a generally difficult sales year in 2009. Big jumps were recorded in terms of sales of interactive whiteboards (+33.98%), online/digital content (+19.0%), and learning management or student information systems (+11.3%) and, to a lesser extent, computing/mobile devices (+3.0%), and instructional software (+1.2%). Looked at another way, if all of the digital product applications are grouped together, this group was up a strong 11.3% in 2009, while the various types of books used by students, as a group, was down 12.7%. These results make it evident that digital resources have not only gained traction in the K-12 school market, they are starting to dominate. In fact, 2009 may be the first year that it became necessary for a company to be heavily invested in digital content/delivery in order to achieve sales success in the non-textbook instructional materials market segment.

• Publisher: Springer US,Springer,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Academic achievement / Classrooms / Economic aspects : information market, information industry / Education / Education market / Educational materials / Educational software / Educational technology / Electronic publishing / Enrollments / Exact sciences and technology / Expenditures / First year / Information and communication sciences / Information economics. Information policy / Information industry / Information science. Documentation / Information systems / Information technology / Internet / Learning / Library and information science. General aspects / Library Science / Market segments / Markets / Methodology of the Social Sciences / Mobile phones / Printing and Publishing / Product development / Resources / Sales / Schools / Sciences and techniques of general use / Social Sciences / Software / Students / Textbooks / Trends / Web content delivery