Is the UK ready to unlock the potential of EdTech

After a major technology showcase at Bett 2025, Peter Doyle, policy manager at the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) reflects on the UK's current education technology landscape, and asks what we can learn from other countries

The world’s largest education technology trade show – The Bett Show – recently finished up for another year. Bett is a mega exhibition that in-fact takes place throughout the year all over the world. As soon as the show packs up in London, it moves over to Brazil and finally over to Malaysia.

The internationalism of the exhibition is testament to the shared challenges and opportunities presented to educators across the world, and of course the export opportunities available to EdTech suppliers based here in the UK.

London is the largest of the three shows, attracting delegations from far and wide to come together to share best practice in the use and application of technology in education. Bett UK is a brilliant opportunity to learn more about how other countries have utilised technology in the classroom – a discussion which is usually kicked off by the Secretary of State for Education, who this year (as previous) opened the show with the opening address.  

When former Secretaries of State have attended the show, they can often be distracted by the shiniest products in the room, not those that are necessarily used by thousands of schools across the country today. However, it was pleasing to see that the current Secretary of State, Bridget Phillipson, focused on the practical changes that are needed in schools today.

Artificial intelligence

A key focus of government communications over the last few months has been on the game-changing benefits for the UK in taking advantage of emerging artificial intelligence technologies across government, and education has been no different. Phillipson pointed towards the ‘game-changing’ potential to leverage technology in the classroom, citing research from the Education Endowment Foundation that effective usage of digital technology can accelerate learning by two to three months.

Pointing to some of the work the government is doing to support schools, Phillipson highlighted a new buying service for schools to support them in procuring the right technology. The service builds on the Government’s Digital and Technology Standards, enabling schools to input their current standards and compare them against the Government’s recommended requirements.

Phillipson also cited the Department’s Connect the Classroom initiative, a worthy project aimed at improving wireless internet standards in schools. BESA has long highlighted the issue of inadequate on-premises networking, which has hindered schools from fully benefiting from national infrastructure upgrades like Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology.

Our annual EdTech survey indicates that internal networking in schools has improved since the scheme’s introduction, with the percentage of schools reporting ‘serious issues’ dropping from 25 per cent in 2022 to around 15 per cent in 2025. This demonstrates that well-targeted funding initiatives can deliver meaningful improvements.

Tackling the digital divide

Phillipson’s speech was framed around the urgent need to tackle the digital divide, a challenge that became starkly apparent during the pandemic. At the time, it was estimated that one in five children on free school meals were unable to access learning due to a lack of devices at home.

Phillipson directly addressed this point during her speech, telling the audience that none of the benefits of emerging technologies could be realised, if it was not available to all teachers and pupils.

Additional windfalls of support funds are required, though seem increasingly unlikely as the government faces an unfavourable economic outlook and higher, more expensive priorities for investment in the schools sector. Indeed, Phillipson’s announcement was notable for its lack of any new policy or funding aimed at addressing issues with digital divide.  

This is particularly concerning given that preliminary findings from BESA’s continuous research into the schools sector indicate that nearly all schools are looking to reduce investment in EdTech to zero for this financial year.

Creating future challenges

Short-termism on utilising the benefits of technology can create challenges for future planning. We saw this most recently as the pandemic brought to light the enormous disparity between schools in how developed their digital learning environments were.  

By comparison, Estonia, who are considered to be one of the most advanced countries in the world for how technology is utilised across all levels of government, ranking first in the EU’s Digital Economy and Society Ranking Index for the availability of digital public services.

In the context of the pandemic this meant that children already had access to devices provided for by their school, and 87 per cent of schools were already routinely using digital libraries and learning management systems, making the transition from in-person to remote learning seamless.

What sets Estonia apart from the UK is a complete twenty-year strategy towards technology, which covers not just education, but all aspects of government and society. The UK, whilst historically having implemented initiatives which were intended to support a specific aspect of the use of technology in schools, has fallen short of Estonia’s comprehensive strategy – incorporating national infrastructure programmes, continuous levels of capital investment, training the curriculum into a single vision transcending across multiple branches and layers of government.  

The result is that whilst the central government takes a strong lead in giving the direction of a policy – the ubiquitousness of digital across government means that teachers and school leaders are empowered to experiment with their own solutions and therefore find it easier to develop bespoke digital learning environments which suit their own specific context.

This was highlighted as a key factor in Estonia’s comparatively strong performance during the pandemic. Andreas Schleicher, head of education and skills at the OECD, pointed this out in an interview with The Guardian when discussing why Estonia had been more successful than the UK: “The key difference is that teachers and school leaders in Estonia are used to working as designers of innovative learning environments, and have great flexibility on how to best configure the people, the spaces, the technology and times in their respective context.”

Estonia’s digital strategy is also a major component of the country’s growing economy, equipping pupils with digital skills needed to navigate the modern workplace. Estonia ranks third in the EU for digital skills, with 67 per cent of the country  possessing basic digital skills, whereas only 48 per cent of the UK workforce possess these. It also performs well on education’s international rankings of PISA in the measures of reading, science and maths – for which it sits at 5th, 4th and 8th respectively.  

Furthermore, Estonia is increasingly becoming a hotbed for EdTech startups. Leveraging its global reputation for a technology-first approach to schools, the government invests heavily in supporting local businesses export their products around the world. With a particular focus on this in the last five years, Estonia’s EdTech market has grown over 50 per cent.

For these reasons, it is crucial that the UK starts planning for the next major digital revolution now. Just as Estonia did following the fall of the Iron Curtain, technology should be embedded within a comprehensive, cross-departmental strategy. This would create the necessary conditions for society to fully harness emerging technologies – both to enhance in-class learning, equip the future workforce with essential skills, and unlock the vast potential of the UK’s EdTech sector.