The business of Folens Publishing

Breakfast Business with Joe Linen, on News Talk. With Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland, helping people across Ireland invest, plan and grow their wealth with confidence. Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. If you were educated in Ireland, then you're probably familiar with my next guest's company. Follens has been publishing schoolbooks for primary and secondary school kids for almost 70 years. Now they are creating a new online study aid called exam flow to reduce the annual stress of preparing for the leaving cert. But how does a publishing business adapt in an online age where AI can do a whole lot of work for the students? Steven Malt is the Chief Commercial Officer with Follens and is sitting in front of me. Good morning, Steven. Good morning. Tell me about exam flow. Sure, thanks Joe. So exam flow is a personalized learning platform for leaving cert students delivered by Follens. So we created exam flow because in the market at the moment there are two ways of studying. One is very much a single speed grinds space that you'll be familiar with, where students would go to online or in-person seminars, but they tend to be hundreds of people and sometimes thousands on the call to a very impersonal and they take you through topic by topic on a weekly basis. And then other areas are self-study kind of resource banks which actually land the student on a platform and then they have to figure it out themselves what they want to study. We created exam flow because it's very much a personalized learning experience so it gives you a personalized study plan and then we use adaptive learning technology so that it learns based on the student's behavior. If they're being successful when they're studying we'll move them through those topics really quickly which will save them time so that they can focus on the areas that they need the most support. But this is not a human interaction, these are all online learning modules are they? That's correct. They're online learning modules however their teachers are at the front and center of the content. So we worked with teachers who have over 70 years of experience teaching in Ireland and a state examiner's 70 years of teaching. What are they? Yeah, between the group of them so we're launching with four subjects and those teachers have vast experience in Ireland and state examiners. Are they on the books with fallen or are you just prevailing on their knowledge every now and then? So they've worked specifically on the product exam flow for us so they've created the content and they do appear in the content as well because we have a number of videos over 100 videos across each subject where they walk you through the topic or certain exam questions. But there's no AI interaction in this as in some invented person having a conversation with students. Absolutely not. No, no, no, we're very much only using AI as an enabler to help with one of our features which is instant marking because we know that stress and anxiety is one of the key barriers to exam successful students and so we've created a product that actually helps to build confidence and you build confidence by giving them quick feedback so they don't have to worry about whether or not they're in the right direction or not but all of our content is created by teachers. And you charge the students per course or per day or per hour hours of work? It's a subscription model so there's a 14 day free trial with exam flow and then after that you can get a monthly subscription or you can pay an annual fee. How much is that so parents will know? So prices start from 33 euros a month for our annual pass. And there's a per subject or for all of us? No that's for all the subjects. So we have four subjects that were launched with math, English, biology and then Irish is about to launch next week. Okay. Now, Poland's has been around for almost seven decades. You've seen a fair few changes in publishing. This is one of them I'm guessing. Yes, absolutely, yep. The idea of publishing books, is it still going to be with us because a lot of learning has gone online these days, hasn't it? Yeah, that's correct. I think books are still very much at the core, they're the foundation of what Poland's do and what publishers do. So our customers are obviously teachers and schools. So we listen to teachers and how they want to teach and we evolve with them. And very much the core programs are the foundation that they use in the classroom. And then we use digital, other products to help the teachers teach. So whether it's PowerPoint presentations or games to help students learn. We listen to teachers and we give them the resources they need to teach in the classroom and outside of it. Now, the state pays for all primary and secondary school books these days. How do you get paid by that ski? Yep. So the government obviously has a fund for school books that goes to each individual school. The school that's based on an individual student, so it's a cost per student. And then we offer the programs to the schools, the schools for post primary would buy via bookshops and then for primary schools by via bookshops or by virus. Do you guys publish any non-school based books? No, no, we're purely focused. Not in romance novels or anything. Unfortunately not. No, no, no, no, we're purely focused on helping teachers teach in the classroom. And how is business? Business is good, you know, it's a challenge as everyone's finding in this economy. But there's lots of change in education. But it also helps that the government is now paying for a lot of the books. To be honest, where the funding comes from isn't our major concern, our concern is building content that the teachers need and want. And there's leaving cert reform. So when new curriculum comes in, obviously there's a requirement to create new content for teachers. And also there's different ways of teaching. So even across primary, where there isn't necessarily a new reform, there is a need to teach in modern ways. So we create programs that our teachers love and enjoy. Thank you, Stephen. That's Stephen Malt. There are Chief Commercial Officer with Poland. Breakfast Business with Joe Lynum on News Talk. Cantor Fitzgerald Island is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.