Espresso Education achieves "High Marks" in Tech Track 100 League table

25th September 2006

Espresso Education Ltd., the leading provider of digital teaching resources to schools across the UK, announced today that it has been ranked 80 in the sixth annual Tech Track 100 league table, to be published by The Sunday Times on 24th September with title sponsor Microsoft. This is Espresso’s first appearance on the ranking.

The London-based company delivers video and multimedia resources to over 8,000 schools each week by broadband. Former Blue Peter editor Lewis Bronze co-founded Espresso Education in 1997.

Today, Espresso Broadband Ltd. consists of three subsidiary businesses including Espresso Education, Netmedia Education (the UK market leading learning platform business - acquired in 2006) and Education Media Delivery (the leading content delivery service for local authorities and schools in the UK - launched in 2005).

The enlarged Espresso company offers customers a unique end-to-end educational solution: creating and delivering curriculum-based content to a personalised learning portal, including systems interoperability, and single points of service delivery and support. Together, they form a powerful solution that no other company in the UK today offers to schools and local authorities.

The 2006 Tech Track 100 ranks Britain’s fastest-growing private technology companies, based on sales growth from 2003 to 2005. With subscribing schools having increased eightfold since 2003 to over 8,000, Espresso sales have grown 48% a year between 2003 and 2005, firmly securing a position on the prestigious list.

Espresso Education’s CEO, Lewis Bronze commented, "As digital pioneers in the education market, we’re delighted that our outstanding growth record should be recognised by inclusion in the Tech Track. We demonstrated that our creative and entrepreneurial approach delivers not only outstanding service to schools, but also business success"

Espresso Broadband’s Managing Director, Richard McGrath, added, “The entire company is very proud of this accomplishment. The focus, talent, can-do attitude and perseverance of the entire team have delivered exceptional customer satisfaction and loyalty. We believe that these ingredients will help us to continue our growth and that they provide us with the right foundation that will also enable us to pursue additional opportunities.”

Further information

For further information related to this release, please contact Sophy Gasson on Tel: 0208 237 1200 Email: sgasson@espresso.co.uk

Note to editors

Espresso Broadband Limited, whose investors include ITN (Independent Television News Limited) and Beringea Ltd, is led by Richard McGrath, Managing Director. It includes the following subsidiaries:

Espresso Education

With over 8,000 subscribing schools using its resources, Espresso Education is the leading provider of educational broadband content in the UK and the proud winner of two 2004 BETT Awards: Best Online Learning Resource and Best Educational Software and 2005 ERA Award for Educational Supplier of the Year. Espresso is a constantly updating comprehensive digital library of high quality, video-rich teaching resources and interactive student activities that support teachers, motivates pupils and raises standards in primary and secondary classrooms. Espresso combines television features, online interactive news articles, instructional video and audio clips, multi-media games and websites, all categorised into modules that directly support QCA and National Curriculum requirements. The service automatically updates on a weekly basis, giving teachers and pupils access to fresh, relevant resources that draw on topical events.

Netmedia Education

Netmedia Education is the market leader in the development of web-based learning environments, data driven education web-sites & portals, education applications and localised content development. Netmedia delivers these services to Education Authorities (LEAs), Regional Broadband Consortia (RBCs) and schools across the UK. The full suite of Netmedia ‘Learning Environment’ products called MyGrid4Learning (MG4L), includes: MyPortal, customisable school and community education portals for LEAs to operate and maintain; MyDesktop, a Virtual Learning Environment, providing a unique, XML-powered and metadata supported, personal desktop for every student and teacher at every school; and others including: MyClasses and MyPortfolio.

Education Media Delivery (EMD)

EMD is a new commercial company established to manage and facilitate the delivery of content from multiple suppliers (one such supplier being Espresso Education) so that all such content can be delivered reliably together on the same caching server platform. EMD offers interoperability certification for software companies looking to run on any cache; and authenticated managed delivery of software and curriculum content to the caches running on a school or LEA network.