computer science

RM plc

RM plc is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand RM plc rather than just read about it. In short: RM plc is a British company that specialises in providing information technology products and services to educational organisations and establishments. Its key market is UK education including schools, colleges, universities, government education departments and educational agencies.

Key takeaways

RM plc belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect RM plc to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of RM plc from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

RM plc is a British company that specialises in providing information technology products and services to educational organisations and establishments. Its key market is UK education including schools, colleges, universities, government education departments and educational agencies. The company was founded in 1973 as Research Machines Limited. As of 2016, RM plc employs around 1,700 people, the majority based in the company's headquarters located on Milton Park, near Didcot, Oxfordshire. RM also has offices across the United Kingdom (Cheshire, Nottinghamshire, Lanarkshire and London) and a software development facility in India.

History

The company was founded in 1973 as Research Machines Limited in Oxford, England, by Mike Fischer and Mike O'Regan, respectively graduates of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Initially it traded under the name Sintel as a mail-order supplier of electronic components, mainly dealing with the hobbyist market. With the arrival of microprocessors in the mid-1970s, the company expanded into the design and manufacturing of microcomputers. The company shipped its first computer in 1977 to a customer in a Local Education Authority and has been involved with educational computing ever since. In the 1980s RM and its rival Acorn Computers sold thousands of computers to schools in the UK as part of the government's Microelectronics Education Programme. A key model of the time was RM's Z80-based RML 380Z. The company was invited to tender to supply the BBC micro but declined on grounds that it was not economically feasible to provide so many features at such a low price and to such a tight schedule. The company floated on the London Stock Exchange in November 1994 under the name RM plc. Mark Cook joined the Group as chief executive officer in January 2023. Previous CEOs were: Mike Fischer (until 1997), Richard Girling (1997–2002), Tim Pearson (2002–2008), Terry Sweeney (2008–2011), Rob Sirs (2011–2012), Martyn Ratcliffe (2011–2013), David Brooks (2013–2021), and Neil Martin (2021–2023). In 2003 the company won the contract to deliver online tests for Key Stage 3 ICT. Despite a pilot phase in 2005 involving 45,500 pupils that was judged a success by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority the government cancelled the contract in 2007, shortly before their scheduled introduction. Cuts in the budgets of UK educational establishments in 2011 damaged RM's revenues, leading it to shed hundreds of employees and sell less profitable parts of its business. RM ceased production of computers towards the end of 2013.

Business structures RM classifies its business into three areas:

RM Technology The division that deals with technology infrastructure, software and services – including interactive classroom equipment, connectivity, networking software, school management software and support services.

RM Educational Resources This division focuses on products for use in the learning curriculum, trading as TTS, a company acquired in 2004. TTS supply educational resources from a number of third-party partners as well as having developed over 5,000 of their own resources – one of the best known and best selling being the Bee-Bot® programmable robot, designed to introduce learners to programming concepts. RM previously offered products from other classroom resources firms it had acquired:

SpaceKraft Ltd – developer and manufacturer of a range of sensory products. Acquired in 2007, sold back to original owners in 2016. DACTA Ltd – distributor of educational products from LEGO, TOLO and BRIO. Acquired in 2007 and sold in 2012. ISIS Concepts Ltd – a UK furniture manufacturer. Acquired in 2009 and sold in 2012. Consortium – a stationery and supplies company, was acquired for £56 million in 2018. Despite substantial investment including a shared distribution factility with TTS and the launch of a new ecommerce website, ultimately the acquisition proved to not be profitable and ceased trading at the end of 2023.

RM Assessment Deals with the process management and outsourcing for testing and qualifications; data analysis services for teachers, education managers and policy makers. Clients include Cambridge Assessment and the International Baccalaureate.

International operations From the mid-1990s the company expanded overseas, with international revenues rising to 12% of the total group's revenue in 2009. A contraction in customer spending in RM's core UK education market and slow growth in the overseas businesses prompted it to divest several of them from 2010.

India RM founded its subsidiary RM Education Solutions India in Thiruvananthapuram in 2003 to develop software and provide central corporate functions. In November 2016 it accounted for approximately 36% of the RM Group workforce.

Germany In 1993 the company established a subsidiary in Soest, Germany, in order to sell a localized version of RM Net LM, a turnkey Local Area Network product for schools, consisting of file-servers running Microsoft LAN Manager, client PCs running Microsoft Windows 3.1 and including a suite of RM-developed network management applications. Despite a nationwide program of marketing seminars and three pilot sites, RM withdrew within two years.

United States RM Educational Software, Inc. was established in 2005 to provide schools and districts in North America with many of the UK software products. It has been inactive since 2011. In 2008 RM purchased and integrated the US interactive classroom provider Computrac and sold it at a loss in 2011.

Asia-Pacific RM Asia-Pacific started operations in 1997. A head office was opened in Perth, Australia in February 1999 after being awarded a contract for schools information systems by the Education Department of Western Australia. The company grew to employ 50 staff located in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Wellington (NZ), servicing over 4,000 schools across Australasia and in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore and Taipei. RM Asia-Pacific was sold to Civica in 2011.

Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA) In 2009 the company announced that it was expanding its business into the MENASA region with offices based in Dubai. The company stated that this would be a joint venture:

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Logo used from the early 1990s until 2010

RM plc: RM's first computer was the RML 380Z — RM's first computer was the RML 380Z

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with RM plc

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what RM plc claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to RM plc before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about RM plc ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of RM plc

In research: RM plc appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses RM plc in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: RM plc is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1973 establishments in England, Companies based in Oxfordshire, Computer companies established in 1973, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for RM plc outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study RM plc in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what RM plc means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain RM plc out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is RM plc in simple terms?

Why does RM plc matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study RM plc?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on RM plc.