Sibelius Software is proud to announce that its market leading Compass composing program has been awarded one of the most sought after awards in the education industry: a BETT Award for best Secondary Software: Content and Tools. Compass fought off tough competition from a variety of educational software and hardware suppliers from across the country to clinch this prestigious accolade. The annual BETT Awards have become renowned among teaching communities across the world for setting the standards in Information Communication Technology (ICT).

Sibelius Compass, which was first announced at last year\'s BETT is a unique program designed to help students learn how to compose, it was recently described by the Times Educational Supplement as \"the most useful dedicated music software written for music education\". The program covers all of the topics associated with successful composition including melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, texture and form. These lead on to complete composition projects, allowing students to write and play back their own pieces.

Sibelius CEO Jeremy Silver commented, \"We are delighted to win this prestigious award. Developing Sibelius Compass has been an exciting project for us, allowing us to combine our experience in composition with our newly acquired sequencing technology, SequenceXtra. We have been very pleased by the positive reaction of music teachers to this innovative, inspirational and practical way to teach music composition.\"

The Awards, one of the many highlights of the BETT 2005 educational technology show (12-15 January 2005, Olympia, London, www.bettshow.co.uk), are run by EMAP Education, in association with the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA), EC&T magazine and the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta).

    Ray Barker, Director of BESA and Joint Chair of the Judges, comments: \"The BETT Awards provide that much needed link between the ICT industry and the teaching community. The BETT Awards also play a key role in demonstrating how ICT can be embedded into subjects across the curriculum. The year-on-year rise in entries illustrates how important the BETT Awards have become in the eyes of teachers and suppliers alike.\"

The BETT Awards, launched six years ago, have become the benchmark for ICT product development. The awards recognise and reward creativity, innovation and commitment in developing the highest quality and most effective educational ICT resources.