New framework launched to drive EdTech quality worldwide 

EdTech Impact, the leading education technology (EdTech) marketplace for schools, has announced today an ambitious framework with certifications to drive EdTech quality and transparency worldwide.

The new quality framework has been built over the past five years in partnership with school stakeholders, industry experts, analysts and researchers, with the goal of providing a clear roadmap for driving increased trust, transparency, and accountability for the EdTech industry worldwide. The framework will be adaptable for different geographical markets with local expert partners, and aims to collaboratively work towards the creation of a set of quality standards.

“We’ve spent many years building a sustainable model that incentivises EdTech vendors to collect independent peer reviews as a tool to power customer success, while increasing trust with potential buyers. This taught us a great deal about the challenges vendors face around increasing their transparency and demonstrating value. In particular, it helped us see where vendors are eager to aim higher, and where schools are looking for better insights. The new EdTech Impact framework will follow the same guiding principles, where participation reveals a goldmine of insights and actions, and rewards the highest quality products with global certification and increased visibility to in-market buyers,” said EdTech Impact CEO, Michael Forshaw.

The framework asks a broad set of questions to assist school buyers in decision-making, from assessing evidence of impact, user experience and pedagogical design, to data responsibility, cybersecurity and algorithmic fairness. A suite of self-assessment tools help vendors assess how their product measures up today, and highlight the areas where higher standards could be achieved. EdTech Impact has also assembled a growing consortium of expert organisations to provide independent assessment and certification, nudging vendors to keep improving their product and competitively succeed in their priority markets.

Amy Rose from Access Group, said: “EdTech Impact has become a core part of our school engagement strategy, giving us that independent credibility to use in sales pitches and with existing customers. We’re completely committed to building and evolving the best product we can, and look forward to using the new framework to further demonstrate our quality and prove our solution works.”

Through EdTech Impact, schools can easily understand the quality and safety of EdTech products in today’s rapidly-evolving marketplace. The new certifications, ratings and insights will show how a product is performing across each key decision-making area, with side-by-side comparisons available for in-depth competitor benchmarking. The assessment data is to be made freely available within EdTech Impact’s school groups portal, enabling digital leaders to make more informed implementation decisions across their EdTech ecosystem.

Neelam Parmar, Chief Digital Officer at E-Act, said: “The new framework is brilliant news for schools looking to evolve their use of EdTech. I want to use technology that is safe, effective and rooted in research. By EdTech Impact doing the heavy lifting, we can save so much time finding quality solutions, and use the framework to demand more from our EdTech providers.”

To find out more, join the launch event on 11th July at 12pm (GMT +1) to hear from the founding partners who helped develop the EdTech Impact quality framework, and to gain exclusive early access.

For all partnership and media enquiries, please contact hello@edtechimpact.com.

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About EdTech Impact

EdTech Impact provides an evidence-first marketplace that empowers educators and institutional leaders to make smarter buying decisions.

The platform brings together a diverse, and often siloed, community of EdTech users, EdTech providers, EdTech researchers and EdTech analysts to systematically assess the quality of education technology using a holistic assessment framework, global quality standards, and time-stamped certification programme.

Today, over 2,000 companies leverage the platform’s data-driven insights to strengthen their product, showcase an independent and reliable evidence base, and gain access to a vibrant marketplace of over 400,000 in-market buyers.

EdTech Impact strikes a balance between robust research and practical user insights, giving a voice to all stakeholders, and providing an off-the-shelf toolkit for building a sustainable evidence-first EdTech ecosystem within their local context.