The first stage of the partnership is the EdTech Innovation Fund. The second part of the programme is the EdTech R&D Programme.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the EdTech Innovation partnership is focusing on supporting students most disadvantaged by school closures. We will not be running a second round of the EdTech Innovation Fund for organisations working in formative assessment, essay marking, timetabling and parental engagement.

Instead, EdTech organisations who are already part of the EdTech Innovation Programme and whose products support remote learning have been invited to apply to the EdTech R&D Programme. This programme will help remote learning tools to adapt to better support disadvantaged students in England.

This fund is supporting 15 organisations with up to £100,000 each to improve, evaluate and grow the reach of digital tools across four challenge areas:

• Formative assessment
• Essay marking
• Parental engagement
• Timetabling

Read about the successful grantees.

The EdTech Innovation Fund grants are supporting:

• Improvement - improving and testing early-stage products that want to grow their reach and impact
• Implementation - supporting products to expand their reach to more schools, colleges and students
• Evidence - supporting organisations to build the evidence base for what works in the four challenge areas

The financial support will last until 31 March 2021 and grantees have access to non-financial support relevant to their individual needs provided by Nesta.

We are excited to be hosting two events at BETT between 22-25 January 2020. We will be discussing our work supporting schools and colleges to make effective use of technology with leading voices in the sector, and inviting school leaders to help shape our work at a roundtable. Sign up to BETT.

Technology can help support the needs of teachers and learners. We want to work with industry and the education sector to support products that can tackle some key challenges in education.

Nesta has a long history of supporting technology in education through investments, research and policy. Our recent report, Educ-AI-tion Rebooted, showed the potential for new digital technologies to transform our education system. By working in partnership with the Department for Education we hope to have a greater impact on the education system and the EdTech sector.

The Department for Education launched its Education Technology Strategy, Realising the potential of technology in education, in April 2019. As part of this strategy, the government outlined ten EdTech challenges to stimulate industry, education and academia to work towards. As part of these challenges, DfE aims to:

• “Cut teacher time spent preparing, marking and analysing in-class assessments and homework by two hours per week or more.”
• “Improve parental engagement and communication, whilst cutting related teacher workload by up to five hours per term.”
• “Show how technology can facilitate part-time and flexible working patterns in schools and colleges, including through the use of timetabling tools.”
• “Show that technology can reduce teacher time spent on essay marking for mock GCSE exams by at least 20%.”

Through this partnership, we are working towards some of these challenges through more effective use of technology.

• 12 November 2019 - grants to EdTech organisations are announced and funding period begins.
• The funding period will end on 31 March 2021.
• 22 - 25 January 2020 - Nesta panel discussions on EdTech at Bett 2020.