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JANISON EDUCATION GROUP LTD (JAN) - Assessment Innovation: How Janison Is Reshaping Education Worldwide

• Andrew Musgrave

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The future of education assessment is digital, and Janison Education Group is leading the global transformation. In this eye-opening conversation, CEO Sujata Stead reveals how this Australian tech pioneer has evolved from its humble beginnings in country NSW to delivering over 7 million assessments across 117 countries annually.

Janison's impressive growth trajectory continues with 9% revenue growth to $47 million in FY25, a healthy $11 million cash position, and zero debt. Their strategic focus balances foundational investments with disciplined execution, yielding both immediate returns and positioning for accelerated future growth. The company's $28.6 million pipeline spans government, professional accreditation, and higher education sectors, with significant concentration in the APAC and UK regions.

What truly sets Janison apart is their revolutionary AI-powered assessment authoring platform, Jai. This game-changing innovation has slashed item development costs by half while boosting productivity five-fold, with no compromise on quality. Early adopters report 70% faster development processes with over 90% acceptance rates of AI-generated items. As Stead explains, "Jai is a great example of how you keep humans still central to the assessment process... but you augment the process by using AI."

The company's credentials in large-scale assessment delivery are unmatched, from managing Australia's NAPLAN tests to their recent landmark contract with the New Zealand Ministry of Education. With a refreshed leadership team and board now in place, Janison is perfectly positioned to capture a significant share of the digital assessment market, projected to reach US$26 billion by 2032. For educators, institutions, and investors alike, Janison represents the cutting edge of how technology is revolutionizing how we measure and unlock human potential.

Curious about how AI and digital transformation might reshape assessment in your organization? Join the conversation and discover how Australian innovation is making global impacts in educational technology.

Andrew Musgrave Host

Welcome again to ASX Briefs, where we speak with the leaders who are shaping the future of Australia's most innovative listed companies. And today we're joined by Sujata Stead, the CEO of Janison Education Group, an Edtech company delivering world-class digital assessment platforms for schools, governments and professional bodies across the globe. Sujata, it’s great to have you with us and thanks for joining me on the ASX Briefs podcast. 

Sujata Stead Guest

Thank you. Thank you, Andrew, for having me in your podcast. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Now Sujata, for listeners that may be unfamiliar with Janison Education, can you provide a brief overview of the company? 

Sujata Stead Guest

Sure, Andrew. Janison Education Group is a pioneer in education technology. The company started in country New South Wales nearly about 25 to 27 years back today, as one of the world's first education technology companies. It's one of those organizations which saw the power of technology in transforming education and since then we have become one of the global leaders as far as the digital delivery of assessments is concerned. And just to give an example, you know, in FY25, we delivered over 7 million assessments in about 117 countries across the world. 

While we work globally and offer our assessments to organizations across the world, our main focus is in the APAC and the UK and surrounding region, and we work with a diversity of clients, right from large government departments to professional accreditation organizations and also with universities and private clients. And in fact, one of our largest clients is the Education Services Australia, for whom we deliver the NAPLAN school assessments across the country, which perhaps is one of the biggest kind of national school assessments, which is delivered across the depth and breadth of a country, across variety of internet connectivity and infrastructure, with an equal degree of reliability, scalability and accessibility. And that's what Janison actually brings, an unprecedented experience of a technology platform that delivers end-to-end digital assessment experiences to organizations around the world and thereby achieving our core mission as an organization to unlock the potential in every learner. So, in short, I think that's who we are, Andrew. At the core of who we are is we are a technology and innovation company, and what we are passionate about is using technology and innovation to unlock the potential of learners worldwide. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, now looking at FY25, revenue grew 9% to $47 million and maintained a healthy $11 million in cash. So, what drove this result and how does it position you for your next phase of growth? 

Sujata Stead Guest

Yes, Andrew, in fact, FY25 we are very pleased. We ended the year with very solid results.

It was my first full year as the CEO of Janison Education Group and our focus, as I've always shared with our shareholders, was two-pronged it is about making investment in the business in terms of the right capabilities, structure, technology, so that we are building a solid foundation for scalable and repeatable growth, by doing that in a manner that we are also simultaneously growing the business. 

So, as a result, we are very, very pleased that we ended the year with 9% growth, which has been generated both by, you know, by the work we do with our longstanding customers, but also new customers coming on board. Then also, I think it's also a result of what we call a very disciplined approach to executing on our strategy, which means that we ended the year also with very strong cash balance and a clean balance sheet of no debts, and also our overdraft facility with our bank remaining untouched, and I think that's been a very, very exciting year for us, Andrew. The combination of growth, the combination of foundation building, and we ended FY25 not only with good financial results but also, of course, with our new AI innovation platform which has been launched, some great new customers on board and also, of course, our full executive team in place, so very much geared towards further accelerating our growth in future years. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and now, with a pipeline that's grown to $28.6 million, what kind of customers or regions are showing the most demand, and how are you planning to convert more of that pipeline in FY26? 

Sujata Stead Guest

Our pipeline has been the healthiest in a long time and, as you said, it's about over $28 million of opportunities which have got at least 30% or above degree of probability of conversion, and it's got a good mix of large government enterprise opportunities as well as professional accreditation, high education and a range of sectors where Janison typically actually provide our services. 

So very, very strong alignment also between you know where the pipelines are coming from and Janison's geographic focus, which is very much a large part of that is focused on APAC and UK and surrounding region and worth noting, of course, that you know a typical time for conversion in terms of our pipeline opportunities in our sector is about 12 to 18 months. And where we are focusing right now is our focus is very much on building those strong relationships across the assessment industry. We are a small organization at the bottom of the world providing, you know, very highly valuable services to organizations around the world, and our philosophy is very much what we call the best of breeds approach, which is very much working with organizations who are offering complementary products and services to the assessment sector and thereby providing a very compelling value proposition to our customers. And hence the focus has also been in terms of how do we, through partnership, actually enhance the access that we have to opportunities globally? 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and just expanding on those partnerships, you've completed the first year of delivery for the New South Wales Selective Schools Testing, so what learnings have come out of that large-scale rollout and how will they shape future government partnerships? 

Sujata Stead Guest

Andrew, our partnership with the New South Wales Department of Education goes back a long time. It's nearly a 20-year-old relationship. It's a partnership that we are deeply, deeply committed to. We have work on a variety of projects with the department, including exams like Valid and Check-in, which were introduced during the pandemic to ensure that, while students were studying during the lockdown, there was an opportunity for teachers to assess how students were performing, and those exams were rolled out in a matter of six weeks and they earned the New South Wales Premier's Innovation Awards. Now, in terms of the digital delivery of the opportunity class and selective high school tests, we indeed delivered this project for the first time in 2025. It's a large, complex project, which included digitising the tests for the first time, new content and also delivering the tests outside of schools. 

While the tests went to plan in over 104 locations where the test was delivered in New South Wales and a few locations overseas, in the three largest locations and centres in Sydney, there were crowd management issues, as a result of which we worked very closely with the department to retest all impacted candidates in a manner that not every candidate had the opportunity to complete their assessments and since then the department commissioned an independent review of the learnings from the crowd management challenges at the three centres. The review report has been published and our focus at the moment is to work very closely with the department colleagues in ensuring that we are taking all the learnings to ensure that we deliver a safe, smooth and successful testing for opportunity classes selective high school tests in 2026. So, and that's our focus making sure that we and the department work closely in the best interests of students in New South Wales. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

You were also recently awarded a landmark national contract by the New Zealand Ministry of Education. So, what does this win mean for Janison, both financially and strategically? 

Sujata Stead Guest

Indeed, Andrew. 

I think it's been quite a strategic win in terms of being chosen as the preferred provider in New Zealand Ministry of Education, and I think for us what it means as an organisation from a strategic perspective is that the exceptional credentials and track record that we have of delivering large-scale assessments for the K-12 sector, whether in New South Wales, which is probably the largest public school education system in the Southern Hemisphere, or for NAPLAN, which is one of the world's largest national school assessments, or previously, as we have done with OECD globally, what it demonstrates is that that track record and credential is replicable and we can take that experience to ensure that we can be of value and benefit to students in other jurisdictions. 

And that really, really excites us because it further consolidates our position as one of the global leaders in digital delivery of assessments, and that's very exciting and very closely aligned with the organization values and missions. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, now looking at AI, you've launched Jai, your AI-powered assessment authoring platform, with early customers seeing five-fold productivity gains. So how does Jai change the game for Janison and also for your clients? 

Sujata Stead Guest

Jai is indeed a game changer, and what really excites us is that how I think we have been able to use the data that us as an organization have through exams like ICAST and the various AAS exams that we deliver, using that data to develop Jai, which is our kind of AI-driven platform for item generation. 

Because one of the challenges, whether both for Janison or for assessment organizations that we serve and support for scaling up one of the key barriers, of course, is development of items, which can often be time consuming, it can be slow and it can be expensive. 

So, what Jai has demonstrated is, first by embedding it internally in our internal item development processes and then externally, by kind of signing up our first customer in the Chartered Accountants of Australia and New Zealand, that Jai can augment the work that our human item developers are doing through a human in the loop model. 

Thereby you know Jai working as a member of the item development team, together working in item generation and, as a result, the internal results what we've seen is we've reduced our item development costs by half and we've actually improved productivity by over five times, while actually no negative implications on quality, if at all, with quality improvement as well, and we've also seen similar feedback coming from our customers who've adopted Jai, saying that it's speeded up the entire item development process by over 70%, with a high acceptance rate of items which are being developed by Jai over 90%. And this is what really excites us, Andrew, because Jai is a great example of how you keep humans still central to the assessment process, to item development process, but you augment the process by using of AI, and AI which has been developed in partnership with our customers, in partnership with our teams, to make sure that it actually is adding value. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Now at a corporate level, you've refreshed both your executive team and the board this year, so how is this new leadership helping accelerate your transformation? 

Sujata Stead Guest

Yes, I think, Andrew. I'm personally very excited about having the whole board refreshment and executive refreshment. In fact, we are starting this new financial year with the entire full exec team on board and what it means for the organization is that now we have the right skills, expertise and the experience required to be able to transform Janison and realize our full potential as an organization which is at the forefront of digitization, of assessments across various sectors. So, getting the right leadership team has been a core focus of the past year and we've had great. We ended the year with some solid results and what I'm looking forward is that, by having the right skills and experience both at the board level and at executive level, looking forward to accelerating that foundation and growth journey of Janison. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Now, just to wrap things up, the global digital assessment market is projected to reach in excess of US $26 billion by 2032. So, what's Janison's edge in capturing a share of that market, and what should investors watch out for next? 

Sujata Stead Guest

Our cutting edge is our proven technology that provides a very robust and highly scalable digital solution for customers and now, which is further augmented and further strengthened by AI, and, of course, our established and growing reputation among the world's highest profile customers. So, from an investor perspective, they'll see us continue to deliver, building on the great work we've done in the past year to transform our company and invest in the future. The whole world is digitizing, you know, and as a pioneer of digital assessments, we as an organization are best placed to capture the growing market and deliver for our customers and shareholders alike. So, it is an exciting time to be in our industry, Andrew. You know organizations have either already digitized or being on that digitization of assessment journey, and having been a pioneer in this area and having that leadership and experience over the 20 years, you know, helps us be in a great position where we can partner with more organizations across the world, helping organization digitize, and we're looking forward to taking our shareholders on this journey. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, Sujata. Well, thanks for your time today. It's been great to have you on the podcast, and we look forward to the next update from Janison Education in the upcoming months. 

Sujata Stead Guest

Thank you very much, Andrew, and thank you very much for having me in your podcast. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs. Don't forget to subscribe and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.