SEN export opportunities

• Article 7 of 15
• EducationInvestor, May 2012

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By many measures, the UK is one of the world's leading countries when it comes to looking after children with special educational needs (SENs). With many countries not sufficiently concerned with the problem to be even recording such a statistic, one in five children in the UK is recorded as having SENs, one of the highest numbers in the world.

It's unsurprising, therefore, that in conjunction with the open procurement market that has been operating in UK schools, most of the innovative technology for helping children with SENs comes from the UK - measured by output per head of population, the UK is possibly the best in the world at developing SEN technology. With the world market for assistive devices for people with special needs projected by BCC Research to reach $13 billion by 2015, that's a big potential market for the UK export industry to capitalise on.

"In this time of austerity, buoyant export markets are presenting UK education businesses, particularly those involved in the development of assistive technology, with significant business opportunities", Martin Littler, chair of the British Assistive Technology Association (BATA), said at an export seminar, held recently at the Department for Business Innovation and Skills. It's a statement with which Ray Barker, director of the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA), agrees.

"The market has certainly been getting bigger since the last election. Schools stopped spending because they weren't sure if their budgets would be cut and companies woke up to the fact they should probably do something else instead."

Certainly, the export market is set to expand. The UNESCO Salamanca statement, signed in 1994 by 92 governments and 25 international organisations, agreed that inclusion of disabled children should be the norm in education. The statement also included a 'framework for action', the guiding principle of which was that ordinary schools should accommodate all children, regardless of conditions. Many of those countries have been lagging in making such provisions, but are now trying to catch up. "Some countries are trying to move very fast and revolutionise what they are doing," Barker says. Children that might once have been 'locked away' rather than in the education system are now out and in schools, particularly those with dyslexia, autism and Down's Syndrome, and medical advances have meant that more and more children who might once have died at birth or shortly afterwards are now surviving - but many grow up to have SENs.

The list of countries interested in UK technology to help provide resources for children with SEN is big, not least because few have their own SEN products - nearly 40% of visitors to the BETT trade show are from overseas. "For exports, Europe is fairly developed, although they have a problem with products that are English-based," says Lorraine Peterson, chief executive of the National Association of Special Educational Needs (NASEN). "Scandinavia is very good. My belief is that SE Asia and Malaysia are growth markets: state provision is poor but there's a big private sector that's often willing and has money to spend, and parents have a a real drive to get their kids into British universities - they'll do anything for them, particularly if their children have disabilities such as dyslexia and mild autism." In addition, countries in the Middle East, including Jordan, the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, are increasingly interested in SEN technology, as are the BRIC countries.

Mark McCusker is the chairman-designate of BATA and CEO of Texthelp Systems. His company now exports £5.25m a year, 45% of trade now being with customers outside the UK - a considerable increase from the £600,000 of trade it was doing just a few years ago. He says the main requirement for a promising export country is that it have "western thinking" when it comes to SENs. As well as Malaysia, he'd include Australia, Canada, France, Israel and Spain in the list of "western thinking" countries, and he's also looking at the United Arab Emirates, Japan and Korea, although that's "early days".

Language needn't be a problem. Many SEN products need minimal translation, but there's a considerably larger private schooling sector in many countries than in the UK and many of these schools teach in English; some countries such as Malaysia teach certain subjects such as science in English; and there's an ex-pat market to sell to as well - so even if a product is heavily text-based and written in British English, it can still find a market overseas without translation.

Not all countries approach SEN the same way, however. Countries, such as Spain, don't have severe dyslexia problems because their languages are more regular than English. Equally, there can be important cultural differences: Qatar, for example, places greater emphasis on more obvious physical disabilities such as visual impairment and is less concerned with cognitive disabilities, such as specific language impairments, and it is far from alone.

Knowing which countries are culturally ready for a product isn't necessarily obvious. Some countries, such as India and China, are also harder to export to because of their fragmented schooling systems. But former UK colonies are good targets for exports, according to BESA's Barker, because they either have British-style education systems or have people who were educated in Britain and are aware of special education needs. Selling into other countries require local knowledge, says McCusker, and that means finding partners. "You need a partner 99 times out of 100 to enter a new market," he says. "When you're just starting, you won't have enough trade to a warrant a new person overseas and there are tax import duties to consider." Partners, however, need to have a specific set of skills. "With someone overseas, you need someone who can speak English as well as the local language and they also have to be able to do tech support for customers: there's no point a Mandarin-speaking customer ringing you up directly for tech support."

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