“Phenomenal” £36 million response to school shutdown by EdTech companies, EDUCATE webinar hears

The UK’s EdTech companies pumped in a “phenomenal” £36 million worth of free resources and support to schools and learners during the first six months of the Covid school lockdown, an EDUCATE Ventures webinar heard.

And schools responded to the challenges of remote learning, with teachers learning new tech skills and reacting positively to the benefits that EdTech offered.

The event, the final one of a series of discussions centred about education reform in the wake of the pandemic, and chaired by Lord Jim Knight, examined the role of EdTech, the data collected by the industry and how this might be used to shape future policy.

Caroline Wright, director general of the British Educational Suppliers Association (Besa), paid tribute to the EdTech sector. She said: “The way our sector stepped up was just phenomenal. It is not a huge sector but it supported British schools to the tune of £36 million in six months alone. Even now Besa companies are providing catch-up advice to schools and there is an ever-closer relationships between suppliers and schools. It is not just about selling products but positive working relationships.”

However, Ms Wright added, the education system continues to face funding challenges with cash for education resources “still below 2015 levels”. School have, on average, just £37,000 a year to spend on all educational resources — including EdTech — in primary schools, and £160,000 in secondaries.

Tariq Sasso, head of Blackfield Primary School, in Southampton, said: “What the tech industry was able to offer in hardware and software trials was incredible, and perhaps even overwhelming in some schools. Pre-lockdown there was not always a lot of forward planning [on technology use].

“But we do not use technology for the sake of it, but where it can empower teachers and learners. It is all about embedding practice and keeping [the use of technology] regular, and not waiting to pull it out in lockdown. Teachers may have been reluctant to engage with tech in the past because they can teach without it but once they see the power of it…they see it is an incredibly powerful tool for change.”

On the downside, Mr Sasso said, hardware prices had “gone through the roof”. “Schools are using way more technology and are looking to invest more in tech, but it is becoming more expensive than it ever has been and this is a concern for schools. Prices are double that of two years ago.”

Meanwhile, Ton Hooper, founder of Third Space Learning, which provides online one-to-one maths tuition, said the pandemic had changed the education landscape, particularly with resources such as the National Tutoring Programme (NTP), which provides catch-up sessions for children who have experienced learning loss. However, he said, schools would prefer to have more freedom to innovate in how they used resources such as the NTP and were “understandably wary of centralised prescription”.

Timo Hannay, founder of SchoolDash which provides statistics and analysis on schools in England, said the pandemic had created a huge amount of data as schools used online resources and expressed a willingness to share their experiences.

“The sharing and analysis of data during what was seen as a national emergency, to mitigate the fact that pupils were falling behind, was a huge win in terms of the development of our skills and understanding of what we can learn,” he said.

“There has never been more interest by government and other organisations, but it is important that people at the policy end are familiar with how analysis works and how to interpret [the data].”

However, there was more interest by policymakers in data on attainment, than on the health and wellbeing of children and young people during the pandemic. “They are both important, but as a dad, I would prioritise wellbeing over attainment,” Mr Hannay said.

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