13 February 2019 at 9:00 am
Kiwi publisher partners with US
New Zealand company Global Education Systems Ltd (Global Ed) has secured a new partnership with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), the largest education publishing company in the US.
The partnership will see the development of a new Global Ed series, JillE Literacy, a reading package containing more than 320 books, written by international education consultant and author, Jill Eggleton.
The series will support HMH’s new reading programme, Into Reading, and will be available for classroom use from June 2019.
Jill Eggleton, and Global Ed Director Tracy Strudley, have been working with HMH for 12 months and are delighted with the new partnership.
“Their access into classrooms in the US is second-to-none. Our goal is to teach reading and HMH can sell these books across US, Canada, South America and the Middle East,” said Tracy.
“The partnership was made possible thanks in part to ENZ’s funding to the Publishers Association New Zealand, which allowed us to travel into the market twice. Without that support, this deal would have taken significantly longer to conclude.”
As part of the partnership, Jill will travel to the US twice a year to train teachers on how to teach reading. Global Ed has worked with New Zealand-based company Essential Resources to build supporting teacher material for JillE Literacy.
“We need more engaged students. Therefore, we need books that excite them – books that spark emotion, imagination, critical thinking, curiosity and creativity,” said Jill.
ENZ Industry Development Manager Annabel Robertson says the partnership shows that education technology (EdTech) has great potential to internationalise New Zealand.
“Global Ed’s new partnership is sharing New Zealand teaching styles and providing teachers around the world with literacy tools to help students. This is great international publicity for our education system.”
