Sydney, Australia – Janison (JAN:ASX) has acquired UNSW Global’s Educational Assessments (EA) business, in a move that could see the publicly listed education technology provider almost double its revenue from the schools sector.
The acquisition is a major expansion of Janison’s K-12 product offering.
UNSW Global is a wholly owned subsidiary of global top 50 university, the University of New South Wales (UNSW). It comprises two businesses: Education, which provides university pathway courses, and Educational Assessments (EA), which develops and distributes assessment products for school Years 2 to 12.
EA’s flagship formative assessment product, ICAS, is a recognised international elite skills-based competition which runs in 15 countries including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Greater China, South Africa and India. Its other products include JET, a curriculum-linked assessment, REACH, a multi-layered reporting platform for schools and SCOUT, a multi-disciplinary assessment designed for use by schools for student placement.
Over the past three years, 4,600 Australian schools have been EA customers – 50 per cent of the nation’s total schools market. The acquisition gives Janison deeper penetration of the sector, with the potential to grow annual recurring revenue from K-12 by 100 per cent.
The deal brings together and enhances both companies’ internationally recognised core offerings: Janison’s assessment delivery technology and EA’s assessment content creation.
Since 2018, Janison has been digitising and delivering tens of thousands of assessments for UNSW Global EA, including ICAS, on the online assessment platform Janison Insights.
In addition to EA’s assessment product offering, Janison will acquire two more significant core assets – EA’s item bank of 20,000 test questions, developed by academics over the past two decades, plus the skillset of EA’s team of psychometricians, statisticians, and exam authoring and reporting experts.
This will allow Janison to produce tailored tests for third parties as well as take up significant opportunities to grow sales via its expanding relationships with global partners, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), for whom Janison delivers the PISA for Schools test, and Desire2Learn (D2L). The combination of EA plus PISA for Schools creates a direct-to-schools business and product portfolio from which to scale.
Meanwhile the divestment will allow UNSW Global to focus on its core Education business, which has enjoyed strong growth in recent years.
Janison is well positioned to thrive amid the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global education sector. In the past month alone, it completed a $7 million capital raise, and won key deals with Cambridge Assessment, the University of London, and SCIO, a national exams provider in the Czech Republic. The acquisition of UNSW EA will further fuel Janison’s bold growth aspirations at a critical inflection point.
Janison’s CEO David Caspari said: “UNSW Global Education Assessments is a high-quality business. This is a well-timed acquisition perfectly aligned with our assessments strategy. The investments made in recent years by UNSW Global to broaden its product portfolio and transition online means it is poised for quality growth both domestically and internationally. As we integrate it into our K-12 business it represents a step change for Janison, and will immediately strengthen our position in the K-12 assessments market.”
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