Replenishment of Classroom Materials After Lockdowns Drives Growth

Replenishment of Classroom Materials After Lockdowns Drives Growth

Total instructional materials sales jump 6.3% in 2022; digital materials total 61% but its market share declines

Rockville, MD-October 23, 2023
A variety of strong converging factors propelled total sales of PreK-12 instructional material to an estimated $9.9 billion in calendar year 2022, increasing 6.3% from the $9.31 billion earned in 2021. That’s according to Simba’s just published comprehensive and data packed Publishing for the PreK-12 Market 2023-2024 research report.

Key forces and reasons for the increase in growth include:

• Continued replenishment of classroom materials as students returned to the classroom

• A need for additional materials to address learning losses from the pandemic.

• Strong local budgets due to more robust-than-expected state and local tax collection

• Growing state budgets, representing an effort to reverse poor educational results

• The continued spending of federal ESSER funding   

• A return to practices paused during the pandemic, such as statewide testing

Simba has also estimated that the share of digital materials as a portion of total sales of instructional materials, which was close to 70% during the lockdown year of 2020, was about 61% for 2021 and 2022; this represents a falling share though dollar sales continue to grow.  Reasons for the fall in share include worries against too much student screen time, and an awareness that print and other physical materials have pedagogical value as a complement to digital learning.

In addition to surfacing and analyzing these major market trends, Publishing for the PreK-12 Market 2023-2024 also examines and analyzes a wide range of other key data that impact educational publishers. These include enrollment trends, with data segmented by district and demographic characteristics of students; alternatives to traditional public schools, such as private institutions, catholic schools, home schooling and virtual schools; graduate rates; and trends in special curriculum and classes ranging from ELL to special education, universal PreK, financial literacy, media literacy and more.

Also included are the data and trends related to budget and policy, including federal and state funding; the ESSER cliff; K-12 spending by type of source; social issues such as school choice, book bans, gun violence, mental health, inclusivity, the rise of generative AI in the classroom, teacher staffing and pay and trends in cybersecurity and privacy.

The report analyzes competitive trends for the industry and profiles and provides strategies and a financial review of key providers for this market. Companies covered include:

• Boxlight

• Cambium

• Cengage

• Discovery Education

• Goodheart-Willcox

• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Kahoot!

• McGraw Hill

• Pearson

• PowerSchool,

• Renaissance Learning,

• Savvas Learning

• Scholastic 

• Stride

About Simba Information
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Corinne Gangloff
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