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RM Education 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. It also sells educational software in the United States. RM Education employs around 1,800 people, the majority based in the company's headquarters located on Milton Park, near Didcot, Oxfordshire. RM also has offices across the UK and in North America and a software development facility in India.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.rm.com/Company/Generic.asp?cref=GP117261 )〕 ==History== The company was founded in 1973 as "Research Machines" 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 microcomputer chips in the mid-1970s, the company expanded into the design and manufacturing of microcomputers. The company shipped its first computer in 1977〔Research Machines, ("Company Profile" ), RM.com, Accessed: 10 March 2009〕 to a customer in a Local Education Authority and has been involved with educational computing ever since. By the time the United Kingdom government was encouraging the use of computers in schools through the Microelectronics Education Programme. The company's early and dominating presence in educational computing meant they were the natural choice as the founders and key partners in the project. RM Education were praised by UK Ministers for being responsible for putting computers into every UK primary school. Throughout the 1980s the company, with its Z80-based RML 380Z, and Cambridge-based rivals Acorn Computers provided computers to the majority of schools in the UK. The company was invited to tender to supply the BBC microcomputer 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. Mike Fischer was Chief Executive of the Group until 1997, when Richard Girling took over. Girling retired in 2002 after RM had been affected by the dot com boom and bust and was replaced by Tim Pearson who left in 2008. Both Girling and Pearson had long careers with RM before being appointed Chief Executive. Long careers are a feature of RM - Pearson having joined the company as a technical support engineer straight from university in 1981. His PA served in that role for both Fischer and Girling. In October 2008 Terry Sweeney took over the role of CEO having joined RM in 1998.〔Research Machines. ("New CEO in 2008" ), rm.com, Accessed: 10 March 2009〕 He lasted in the role until October 2011, when the RM Board was re-structured, the existing non-executive chairman Martyn Ratcliffe taking over as Executive Chairman and long-term RM employee Rob Sirs (21 years) taking up the position of Group Managing Director. The company also won the contract for KS3 ICT tests. These were innovative on-line tests that provided a virtual PC office environment for students. Very late in the day, the government scrapped the tests. 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.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.rm.com/Investors/NewsDetail.asp?cref=IN2247678 )〕 In October 2013 RM announced that it would cease production of computers, which would entail 300 redundancies. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「RM Education」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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