Britain's biggest school textbook publisher is to link up with the main provider of school computers to provide "online curriculum" materials for pupils.

The two Oxfordshire companies -- Harcourt Education, based at Jordan Hill, north Oxford, and RM, of Milton Park, near Abingdon -- aim to capture a slice of the billions of pounds of Government money being promised to schools.

A first instalment of £30m of e-learning credits was distributed to schools earlier this month and another £20m will be paid in April.

RM's new Virtual Teaching and Learning Environment will include material written by other educational publishers, with lesson plans and assessment as well as programs for pupils.

Harcourt Education, a division of multinational group Reed Elsevier, already provides "blended electronic learning" with software linked to textbooks published under the imprints Heinemann, Ginn and Rigby.

Under the technology partnership, the two companies will co-operate to produce online curriculum material and RM will provide Harcourt with information and communications technology consultancy and support.

RM chief executive Tim Pearson said: "Harcourt is the leading name in educational publishing in the UK, with an enviable reputation for the quality and effectiveness of its materials. Working in partnership we will be able to take proven educational resources and approaches and deliver them in an ICT environment."

The deal was announced as RM revealed pre-tax profits down to £5m, compared with £16.3m last year. This excludes the £9m cost of redundancies and other exceptional charges, which resulted in an overall loss of £4.8m. The company returned £3.4m to shareholders by buying back shares.

Mr Pearson said he did not expect further job losses after a review which led to 150 redundancies.

He said: "Tight cost controls have had an immediate and significant effect."