The government's Education Technology (EdTech) strategy, Realising the potential of technology in education has just been published by the Department for Education. The new strategy highlights the opportunities of technology (including the power of assistive technologies to support increased function, motivation, independence and access to learning) and is the Department's first step in supporting the education sector to overcome the barriers to embedding technology in an effective and efficient manner.
It sets a number of 'EdTech challenges' to industry, the education sector and academia to prove what is possible and inform the future use of EdTech across our education system. They are designed to support a partnership between the EdTech industry and education sector to ensure product development and testing is focused on the needs of the education system.
To support the challenges, the DfE will establish:
- A series of innovation competitions
- A small testbed of schools and colleges to support the development, piloting and evaluation of technology
- Leading demonstrator schools and colleges, which will build on existing good practice in the sector to exemplify how these technologies can be used to best effect.
One of these challenges is to "identify the best technology that is proven to help level the playing field for learners with special educational needs and disabilities."
To help steer the work of this challenge and to help drive the agenda forward DfE will be convening a group of leading assistive technology developers and education experts.