History of Education City
In 2009, Education City subscriptions will generate $11 million in revenues. The organization operates out of Illinois, USA and Leicestershire in the UK, employing over 100 people comprising talented programmers, artists, producers, customer services and commercial representatives.
Our exciting history began in 1999 with our founders, Matthew Drakard and Simon Booley, who built the strong foundations for our growth.
Click on a year date to see the progress of Education City each year.
Corporate History Time Line
Our 10th year anniversary and a trusted brand on both sides of the Atlantic, with a combined total of over 12,000 subscribing schools!
Applauded at the industry awards, winning two Teachers' Choice awards and an Eddie award.
So far this year we have successfully added:
- Topic Tools for Math
- Matemáticas module
- Pre-Kindergarten module
- Math Tests module
- Community forum
Education City continued with its extensive development program to ensure it remains at the forefront of curriculum content.
New product launches included activity sheets for whiteboard use.
Our Chicago office moved to larger premises to facilitate expansion to 30 staff members.
By the end of the year, Education City had over 9,000 schools subscribing to it and had generated revenues of $10 million.
Over the course of 2007, we successfully:
• integrated phonics-based activities within its Language Arts modules.
• enhanced its Standards Map to include new Topic Filter functionality.
• extended the scope of its activities with printable activity sheets.
The US team moved to larger premises to support the growth of the company.
By the end of the year, it had over 5,000 schools subscribing to it.
By 2006, Education City had become a well recognized name in the education sector and the U.S. team moved to offices in Illinois, Chicago.
EducationCity.com developed its SuccessTracker module and myCity feature.
These ground-breaking developments took Education City to the next level, offering teachers much appreciated support in tracking their students’ performance, allowing them to differentiate the learning in their classrooms effectively - and making personalized learning a real possibility!
By the end of 2005, EducationCity.com had over 1,500 subscribing schools.
In response to requests from parents who were hearing their kids enthuse about Education City after school, the company launched its home product. This not only facilitated learning in the home setting, it also enabled parents to get more involved too.
In 2003, EducationCity.com launched its Standards Map feature in response to feedback from its growing subscriber base of 250 schools.
Integral to its success, EducationCity.com’s new-found ability to link activities to the learning objectives enhanced the resource’s usability and made it a firm favourite with teaching staff.
In 2002, the first school subscribed to Education City. 
In 2001, Education City had a portfolio of over 100 activities.
In 2000, the Education City characters Stig, Sten, Manu and Klara were designed and created (later receiving a facelift in 2008).
Initial work began by a team of five people on a 3-year development project to design online eLearning content for schools.
At the time the resource was called EducationCity.net (changing to EducationCity.com in 2003).
By the end of this year the Education City company logo and the first math activity had been created and the product became accessible online.
