Category Archives: Sanoma Learning

Thank You, Goodbye and Merry Christmas!

Christmas

Dear Friends and Colleagues at Sanoma Learning,

Passion for Learning

It has been an exciting sprint to the very end with the announcement of the acquisition of Clickedu in Spain this week, bringing not only a great new company into the family but also a bit of extra sunshine 😊. In the meantime this will be my last message to you all as CEO, with my 10 years at Sanoma coming to an end. I’ve loved leading our company and been inspired by the “passion for learning” that can be felt in the teams everywhere who have worked tirelessly to make a positive impact on teaching and learning. Thank you all for your dedication and excellent work!

Major transformation

Our company has gone through a major transformation during recent years:

Our reach has increased from some 10m to 15m learners and from 5 to 10 core countries
Our sales have increased from some €290m to close to €500m in 2020
Employment at Sanoma Learning has grown to almost 2100 FTEs
We have grown our market share and made great leaps forward on the digital transformation
We have delivered strong profitability and profit growth, amongst the highest in the industry
We have achieved good success in building one European company out of the 5 original units, through the High Five program
We have made a number of important acquisitions, this year adding Iddink Group, itslearning, Essener and Clickedu to the family.

This has been quite a journey and I believe we are well prepared and well positioned for the next phase of growth at Sanoma Learning. I see a bright future ahead for our company!

Thank you to the teams!

What I remember and appreciate most looking back at the last 10 years is the people: the friends and good colleagues I have made along the way. I feel a strong sense of dedication in our teams everywhere. People are eager to learn new things and looking to the future. Striving to do the right thing for education and for the company. Although it has sometimes been challenging, it has also been truly inspiring to work in an organisation with such commitment and potential.

I would once again like to thank each and every one of you for your dedication in doing a great job and moving Learning forward. It has been a privilege to be able to lead this successful company and I would like to wish you all the best for the future. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter or reach out to me at johnrichmartin@gmail.com if you want to stay in touch.

Merry Christmas!

Finally I would of course like to wish everyone a well-deserved break and a very Merry Christmas with your loved ones! I hope you will have a wonderful time and get plenty of rest ready for an exciting new year ahead 😊. Cheers!

Looking forward >>

John Martin

CEO Sanoma Learning

Give the gift of education: www.camfed.org

Looking for new opportunities in education (technology)

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Europe’s biggest edtech company

After 10 years at Sanoma, mostly leading Sanoma Learning, I’ve informed the company of my intention to move on as of spring next year, giving plenty of time to arrange a smooth handover to a successor. Check out the press release of 13 November about it here.

Great place to work

It’s been an honour to lead Learning during this period, and I’m really proud about what the teams have achieved. I love the dedication to learning that can be felt across the company and very much respect the commitment of our people to do a great job for pupils and teachers.

Growth and successful transformation

Our teams have achieved a lot of success in local markets and made great leaps forward on the digital transformation. We have worked together intensively across the company on the High Five program in building one Sanoma Learning. And we’ve completed a number of acquisitions including Sanoma Utbildning in Sweden, Tammi Learning in Finland, De Boeck in Belgium and and Iddink in The Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. We are now about twice the size we were five years ago.

Amongst the best performers in the industry

Today we stand as a very successful company. We are positively impacting about 11m learners and 1m teachers in some of the World’s best education systems through a professional organization of some 1700 talented people. We are a frontrunner on the digital transformation, arguably Europe’s biggest edtech company today in terms of revenues and employment.

We’re growing and amongst the best performing companies in the industry financially: 2018 brought us the strongest result in our history so far, and we are well on track to extend that success further in 2019. It has really been a privilege to be part of this great company!

My priority right now is to continue leading Learning effectively and then to handover to a successor before leaving Sanoma.

Investing in education/technology

After that, I’m intending to make some investments in the education (technology) sector and to see where that brings me. For early stage investments I will be investing in and working together with eduimpact.fi. For later stage investments I will work together with other investors. Feel free to reach out to me at johnrichmartin@gmail.com if you think I could in some way help your company to prosper.

Thank you!

Thank you to my colleagues at Sanoma Learning for their excellent work and cooperation through the years. Wishing them and Sanoma Learning all the best for a bright future ahead!

Looking forward >>

John Martin

Teachers Want to Go Digital Where it Brings Most Benefits

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In the fifth annual Sanoma Learning Impact Framework (SLIF), we decided to focus on the main tasks the teacher performs in her profession. In total 7075 teachers responded to the survey, which was again carried out in all of the markets in which we operate: Belgium, Finland, The Netherlands, Poland and Sweden.

Core activities

The main tasks for teacher are: lesson planning, teaching the whole class, exercising, testing, assessment and giving guidance personally or in small groups. Of course there are other tasks too, such as administrative work and professional development, but these are the most frequently repeated activities.

Figure 1 depicts the amount of time teachers estimate they spend on each activity. Teaching the whole study group takes most of the teachers’ time, but still only less than a third.

Figure 1. Percentage of time spent on different tasks

As part of the digital transformation, we are as an educational publisher very interested in whether teachers prefer print or digital materials to support them in their work. Our experience so far is that they value both, and in last year’s SLIF we came to the conclusion that blended learning is the way to go.

As-is/to-be: medium vs activity

This time we decided to be more specific and map the print vs. digital axis with the activities a teacher carries out. This provided us with revealing results, as depicted in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Materials and tools offered by publishers: Current use vs. Willingness to use

First of all, teachers would like to use more digital materials in all tasks than at present. Secondly, and perhaps more interestingly, the gap between current and desired state is the greatest in tasks where pupils/students have a relatively more active role, namely exercising, testing, and assessment.

Currently 65% of teachers are using printed tests/exams. 28% say they use half & half or primarily digital tests/exams. Contrasting this with the desired state is staggering and the percentages get flipped: only 28% would like to use primarily print and 68% half or primarily digital. A similar phenomenon can be seen in exercising and assessment.

Digital where it makes most impact

What to make of this? We think the answer is simple. Both exercising and testing generate a lot of new content and insights for the teacher to go through. This makes assessment time-consuming for the teacher. With both questions and answers in a digital form, time is saved, insights are increased and pupil/student engagement is enhanced. Teachers are selectively looking to use digital for maximum impact.

Santtu Toivonen, Lead Insight Manager, Sanoma Pro

John Martin, CEO, Sanoma Learning

Sanoma’s Start-up Challenge Five Years On

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Five years on from Sanoma’s Start-up Challenge on the Future of Learning at TNW2014, I checked out how the five finalists have fared. I’m impressed!

Winner Labster raises growth funding

Winner of the Challenge Labster has been prospering and announced at the end of last month raising $21M in a series B round to develop more digital lab simulations and to grow in the US market. Next stop the World.

DragonBox joins Kahoot!

Maths app developer DragonBox announced today that it has been acquired by Kahoot! for $18M. Their claim is that together they are going to make learning maths awesome!

ClassCharts wins BETT

Edukey’s ClassCharts, a seating planner and behavioural management tool, has gone from strength to strength based on the close understanding of teaching and the classroom underpinned by a strong data and analytics capability. Edukey won Company of the Year at BETT2019.

Jumpido combines movement with software to boost maths learning and looks like quite a fun thing to do in primary schools. Although the website is still active and the company was a finalist at the Forbes e-volution Award in 2016, they have been rather quiet since.

The website for the final contender Eduvee, an intuitive learning and tutoring platform, now re-directs to the education page of custom software and consulting company Elinext, likely indicating that some form of major pivot has taken place for this company.

Impressive

Overall it’s really impressive to see how much success these companies are achieving. We were lucky to have selected such a strong cohort for our Start-up Challenge.

Inspiring

What I found inspiring in all of the contestants at the time was their deep understanding of their customers and their passion and drive to make a difference. Five years on you can see the positive impact of the energy they have put into their ventures.

Looking forward >>

I’m curious on how far these companies will go in the next five years, and wish them every success in turning their ambitions into reality.

Teachers value blended learning

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In 2018, we carried out our SLIF survey (Sanoma Learning Impact Framework) for the fourth time. In total 7594 teachers answered the online survey, which was carried out in all our markets: Belgium, Finland, The Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden. The main purpose of SLIF is to investigate the impact of published materials on learning. This time we focused on blended learning materials.

We are happy to observe that digital materials are gaining ground in learning. The most important benefit of digital according to teachers is engagement. 68% of the survey respondents felt that digital materials are more engaging for their pupils/students than printed materials. This is easy to believe: for example Bingel with its visually appealing avatar characters which the pupils can adapt with pingping they earn from doing exercises has proved to be very engaging and motivating.

Ultimately we want to offer learning materials that lead to improved learning outcomes. When we asked which factors have the highest influence on learning outcomes, engagement was mentioned as the most important factor, followed by variation in learning activities, individual coaching, and timely feedback to pupils.

It is worth noting that the second most important factor, variation in learning activities, was also considered as something which is better achieved in the blended model. 64% of respondents thought that digital learning materials are better for providing variation than print materials. Again, this is easy to understand. Digital learning materials include video, audio, animations, interactive exercises, instant feedback, and other features obviously missing from printed materials.

Figure 1 summarizes nicely the teachers’ attitude towards digital learning materials. We can see that only 27% of teachers use only printed materials. Whilst it is significantly more than the amount of teachers using only digital materials (3%), we can see that the majority of teachers are somewhere in between, adopting the blended learning approach: 17% apply half digital / half print approach, and 44% primarily print with some digital components.

Figure 1. Teachers would like to use more digital learning materials

It’s interesting to compare the current state of teachers’ materials with their ideal situation. At the moment 17% of the teachers use half digital / half print materials. However, 38% would prefer to have this combination. The difference in print-only teaching is even more pronounced with 27% of teachers currently teaching with print only, but a mere 1% would like to do so also in the future. This is firm evidence that demand for digital should grow in the coming years.

“Demand for digital in the blended mix to grow”

Whilst teachers want more digital, as our survey clearly shows, it is worth emphasizing that virtually no-one of our respondents would like to teach with digital-only materials. Currently 3% are doing so, but it is not seen as the optimal state by anybody. What to make of this? Our answer: blended learning models work best.

Santtu Toivonen, Lead Insight Manager, Sanoma Pro

John Martin, CEO, Sanoma Learning

Strongest result in our history so far at Sanoma Learning

Thank you!

I very much want to thank the teachers and pupils who work with our courses for your trust in us. I would also like to thank our teams for the good work in 2018. I know we asked a lot of you and I appreciate the important work we did together. This has truly been a team effort!

Looking forward >>

We have a big year ahead of us not least with the launch of new platform Kampus in Finland and Sweden, Bingel in The Netherlands, new reforms in Upper Secondary Education in Poland and other reforms in Belgium. We will be working hard to progress the High Five Program. And we expect to finalize the transaction with Iddink and further develop the business.

We have a strong plan for the coming years and are highly committed to making a positive impact on learning and teaching. Looking forward >>

High Five!

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We’re currently executing the “High Five” program at Sanoma Learning: working together across the borders of the five national units to build one integrated European company.

We serve about 10m pupils and 1m teachers in some of the World’s best performing education systems (Finland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Poland and Sweden). Our customers especially appreciate “blended learning solutions”: mashing up physical and digital approaches to inspire learning. High Five is really about organizing ourselves to be able to create and provide impactful blended learning solutions to schools in the most effective way.

We’ve divided the program into three areas:

Investing in the future (our approach to digital applications, courses, data and technology)
Funding the journey (improving our procurement processes)
Enabling the transformation (making sure our support processes are fit for the digital transformation).

Kirsi Harra-Vauhkonen (MD of Sanoma Pro in Finland & CPO Secondary Education) and Winfried Mortelmans (MD of Van In in Belgium & CPO Primary Education) discussing High Five with the team in Helsinki.

The last weeks we’ve been travelling with the team to all of the countries to engage further with our people as we move forward with High Five. I have experienced this as an inspiring period, bringing a lot of new energy, and I feel we really have a good momentum with High Five!

I’d like to thank the teams for all the excellent work in co-creating and executing High Five so far and to all our people who joined us in the roadshow. Very much appreciated and well done!

Looking forward >>

Creating a European Champion in Learning

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CMD cover

We’re an ambitious company and we are working on building a European Champion in Learning.

Last week we held our annual Capital Markets Day event in Helsinki – which is a good chance for us to share our plans with the investment community. It was a positive day. The team was in good spirits and there were lots of great questions from the participants.

I talked about our approach to building a European Champion. Check out the video of the session here.

Our starting point is strong: we serve 10m pupils and 1m teachers in some of the world’s best and most advanced education systems. We’re a front runner on the digital transformation and have a strong financial performance and track record. We have a solid plan and believe we can add even more value for our customers in the future.

We have a three pillar strategy to build this European Champion:

Win in local markets, by serving our customers well
Work together across borders to create one integrated company
Make selective acquisitions in current and new learning markets

We’re really excited about the opportunities for the business and our team is going for it!

I’m interested to hear your views and if you see opportunities that you think we should be developing too.

CMD strategy

Winning Spirit of Nowa Era at 25

Past to Present

25 years ago it would have been almost impossible to imagine the success that Nowa Era has become today. I wonder in those early days whether Mariusz and Magda even dreamed

We would become the market leader
Serving nearly every school in the country in some way
With such an outstanding quality of offering.

Present to Future

If you think what the team has achieved in the last 25 years – just imagine the next 25!

The key to the success of Nowa Era is our people

Who are doing extremely important work in enabling high quality education
In talented and hard-working teams
And striving to do it to the very best of their ability.

Spirit of Nowa Era

I call this the “winning spirit of Nowa Era“. I believe it will help us to make the next 25 years even more successful than the first 25.

With respect and appreciation

With respect and appreciation I would like to thank the teams for their commitment and outstanding achievements. We are extremely proud of you.

Five Reasons Why Blended Learning is an Ongoing Success in Finland

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This week I joined the education event Dare to Learn in Helsinki with colleagues from Sanoma Pro. With 3000 participants from over 20 countries it was well organised and people were in a positive spirit. Thanks to the organisers for having done a great job!

Finland has a world-class education system with several factors underpinning the success including skilled and respected teachers, high levels of equity and trust in the system and an holistic view to the development of children. Education professionals from around the globe are interested to learn about the Finnish ways.

I think that blended learning is an enabler of excellence in Finnish education and gave a keynote talk on this topic, with the headlines:

1. Blended learning plays to the natural strengths of the local education system, enabling the excellent teachers, taking advantage of the high quality curricula and materials and putting to work the technology available in schools and homes.

2. Blended learning models are practical and flexible as schools transform to a more digital future. Our research indicates that teachers are increasingly ready and willing for the digital transformation. We’re also witnessing the emergence of new pedagogies such as phenomenon-based learning, and blended solutions can be very helpful enablers of these new pedagogies.

3. Blended learning supercharges great teachers (and there are many of them in Finland). A Sanoma Learning solution typically saves a teacher about 8 hours of working time each week – time which can be channelled into individual attention to pupils. And with dashboards and personalised learning pathways, teachers have excellent insights and tools to guide interventions.

4. Blended learning motivates and engages pupils in their learning endeavours. Our learning impact surveys have indicated that 95% of teachers typically report that integrated learning methods help them to engage pupils with learning. Some like printed books while others prefer online materials. Nowadays boys often lag behind girls in learning. Our analytics indicate that gamified solutions integrated into the approach such as bingel are especially motivating for boys, providing a way to bridge this gap.

5. Blended learning supports pupils’ achievement and outcomes. Blended learning is a step towards personalized learning, which takes pupils’ personal achievement level and preferences into account. In our surveys, 85% of teachers have reported that such solutions help the pupils to achieve their curriculum goals.

By applying blended learning methods and techniques, Finland can stay on top of its game in education. Teachers can make the most of their teaching and pupils stay motivated, which helps them to achieve their learning goals.

* Blended learning is mix of various event-based activities, including face-to-face classrooms, e-learning and self-paced learning.

Passion for Learning

Major transformation

Thank you to the teams!

Merry Christmas!

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Great place to work

Growth and successful transformation

Amongst the best performers in the industry

Investing in education/technology

Thank you!

Looking forward >>

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Core activities

As-is/to-be: medium vs activity

Digital where it makes most impact

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Winner Labster raises growth funding

DragonBox joins Kahoot!

ClassCharts wins BETT

Impressive

Inspiring

Looking forward >>

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Thank you!

Looking forward >>

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Past to Present

Present to Future

Spirit of Nowa Era

With respect and appreciation

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