There’s something very exciting about the start of a new year, particularly when it’s also the start of a new decade. It’s natural to take time to reflect over the past years, identify both the highs and the lows and to reminisce. Ten years ago, Bright Red was still very much in its infancy and just starting to bring innovative, fresh Study Guides into the marketplace that students, parents and teachers could depend and rely on. It’s wonderful to see how much the company has grown in that time – we’ve published more than 65 Study Guides from National 4 to Advanced Higher level and more recently, have expanded into publishing Course Books for Broad General Education.

As the company has grown, so has the Bright Red community – we have developed great relationships with schools across Scotland. We love going along to school events and hearing first-hand how our books have made such a difference in the classroom and at home – helping students to achieve their potential. So much has happened in the last ten years and it’s exciting to think what’s in store for Bright Red over the next decade.

2020 is a year we are really looking forward to. After a few years of heavy curriculum change and spending much of our time updating and revising our back-list, it’s brilliant to be able to drive our front-list forward again and bring through new books in new subjects and levels to help students and teachers throughout Scotland.

Towards the end of last year, we published a BGE Level 3 Science Course Book and this year, we’ve kicked things off with the launch of our second BGE Level 3 Course Book for Mathematics. It’s a beautifully designed book, with colourful images to spark interest and help illustrate mathematical concepts and ideas. Each page has been designed with a great deal of care to really help bring mathematics to life and break down those trickier topics into more digestible bite-size chunks. The Course Book is written by subject expert and experienced teacher Mike Smith who we’ve worked closely with in order to create a bespoke mathematics book that is packed with worked examples, exercises and activities that both cement and stretch numerical understanding. With the experiences and outcomes clearly outlined, this Course Book makes tracking student progress much more straightforward, offering a great resource to teachers and helping parents support their children with the more challenging topics at home.

Our BGE Level 3 Science Course Book and our BGE Level 3 Mathematics Course Book are just the start of this series, we have plans to publish more BGE Level 3 and 4 Course Books in Business, Modern Languages, Modern Studies, Geography, English over the course of the year. Many of these books are currently in the development stage and it’s rewarding to see how the transcripts are being transformed into aesthetically pleasing pages that are packed with thoughtful content that ties in with the relevant benchmarks.

We also have plans to publish into a new subject area in the next month or so. Over the years, we’ve had many requests for Media Study Guides and are delighted to be able to bring a National 5 and Higher Study Guide to the market this February. It’s one of the biggest benefits of being a wee publisher – we can take on teacher feedback and publish for smaller subjects that might not have many resources on offer at all. These Media Study Guides will be the first of their kind and will contain all the brilliant Bright Red features, with extra support on our learning platform, the Bright Red Digital Zone.

After so much curriculum change, we are thrilled to be moving forward with our front-list titles and to be delivering cutting-edge books and resources that are written specifically for SQA courses, with student success at the heart of what we do. Let us know if there’s anything you are looking for and we can’t wait to bring all of the above to you in the next 12 months.