COMPUTER company RM is taking on an extra 100 staff between now and September to cope with an influx of orders from schools spending the Government's £100m handout for Information Technology, writes Maggie Hartford.

Announcing half-yearly results, chief executive Richard Girling told the Oxford Mail: "We have 850 people at the moment and we have 100 vacancies between now and the end of our financial year.

"It's not easy finding staff in the Oxford area and we are looking to increase staff across the board: sales and marketing, research and development and service people."

RM, which has already expanded by 250 staff in the last two years, is negotiating a 30 per cent increase in space at its headquarters at Milton Park, near Abingdon, creating a mezzanine floor to accommodate the extra employees.

The Government money became available to schools at the end of April and the first orders are just arriving, said Mr Girling.

"It will reach a peak in July, August and September because schools like to spend money so that the equipment is ready for the new term. It gets very hectic in September - no holidays allowed!"

RM has 55 per cent of the secondary schools market and 45 per cent of the primary market. In April RM won £2.7m worth of business from the Department for Education and Employment, supplying an internet service called Living Library for the Multimedia Portables for Teachers pilot.

The company is now bidding for a share in another £230m funding from the mid-week lottery, to be available for teacher training in IT from the end of 1999. RM aims to link up with the Open University to provide distance learning.

Because of the funding, RM feared that many schools would defer spending and had warned that profits would drop for the six months ended March 31.

But Mr Girling said: "Results were slightly ahead of our expectations, with turnover up three per cent."

Profits were down to £0.64m from £1.68m in the same period last year, because the company was investing in extra staff and equipment to meet the expected influx in orders for the second half of the year.

"We believe that both the investment made and the performance of the group in the first half position RM well to take advantage of the additional public funding available and that this will result in a significant increase in the level of business for the full year," he said.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.