The EdTech Innovation Testbed will support evaluation of promising EdTech products in schools and colleges in England. We are looking for technology products that have the potential to reduce teacher workload and support teaching and learning and who are committed to improving their evidence base with robust, independent evaluation.

In order for your application to be considered, your product must meet our eligibility criteria:

1. Your product is already in use in at least 25 English state schools or colleges.
2. Your product uses digital technology to support the reduction of teacher workload through one of the following challenge areas:
   1. Formative assessment and essay marking
   2. Parental engagement
   3. Timetabling
3. Your product would expect to see impact towards reduction of teacher workload within one or two terms from initial implementation.
4. Your product meets our requirements for existing standards of evidence and you can demonstrate an understanding of your impact in your application (see below for more detail).
5. You must be able to provide three references from publicly funded schools/colleges in England who are current customers.
6. For formative assessment and essay marking tools only: your product must be linked to the English National Curriculum for Key Stages 1 to 5 or other post-16 education.

Required standards of evidence and understanding of impact

The EdTech Innovation Testbed will support robust, independent evaluations of EdTech products in schools and colleges that aim to provide more robust forms of useful evidence. To help us ensure that we identify organisations for which this would be most useful, we will assess (a) existing evidence supporting your EdTech tool and (b) understanding of how your tool contributes to impact.

All participating organisations will need to be able to demonstrate supporting evidence that suggests the EdTech product has impacted on teacher or student outcomes in England. All participating organisations will need to be able to demonstrate an understanding of how their tool leads to an impact on teacher or student outcomes. This information is assessed in Section Three, ‘Outcomes and Evidence’.

We are interested in tools that support formative assessment and essay marking, including:

• Planning, teaching, assessing, evaluating, giving feedback and storing information used to support teaching;
• Any subject taught in English state schools or colleges as long as it is linked to the English National Curriculum for Key Stages 1 to 5 or other post-16 education;

We are interested in tools that support parental engagement, particularly tools that:

• Enable two-way communication between schools and parents;
• Help sharing of information with parents in a more efficient way or in a way that would not be possible without technology;
• Support parents to engage with their children’s education and progress at home;
• We are not looking for tools that only support parents with home learning not connected with their school or college.

We are interested in tools that support timetabling, particularly tools that:

• Enable more flexible working in schools and colleges;
• Support more logical timetabling to save teachers’ time.

Applications for EdTech organisations to join the testbed were open during the Autumn term 2019. Nesta and our independent evaluation partner, Durham University Evidence Centre for Education, are now working to shortlist EdTech products, pick those most suitable for a trial and match these to school and college needs.

Each participating EdTech product will be matched with a group of schools/colleges. Once matched, our evaluation partner will work with you to trial your product in a number of schools or colleges over at least one school term to find out what’s working and what could be improved. These trials will be carried out from April 2020 to July 2021, with each one starting at the beginning of a school term. We will then work with you to publish the results of the trials and share learning.

Applications for the EdTech Innovation testbed closed on Monday 2 December 2019. If you’d like to find out about opportunities for EdTech organisations at Nesta, please email [email protected].

The trials may use different evaluation models depending on the technology product, the existing level of evidence and the number of schools or colleges able to take part. We aim for all evaluations to improve upon the existing standard of evidence for an EdTech organisation. We expect all trials to include some basic elements:

• Each school/college and EdTech organisation will work with our independent evaluation partner who will use their expertise to design specific evaluations suited to their needs.
• The trials will be designed based on EdTech products’ existing evidence, use and outcomes. All trials will be designed to improve the standard of evidence of impact for an EdTech product as well as to better understand how the product can be best implemented to support schools and colleges.
• Trials will last for one or two terms.
• EdTech organisations will be expected to support schools and colleges to implement the technology for the trial, as they would for new schools and colleges.

Most trials will involve baseline data collection in the schools or colleges to allow the evaluation partner to monitor the impact of the EdTech tool being used. Our evaluation partner will also carry out qualitative research on how the product is implemented and used.

Some trials are likely to involve ‘control groups’. ‘Control groups’ are participants who don’t trial the product at first, so that we can compare the impact of the technology tool against those who are not using it. Where control groups are used, we will use a waiting-list design to ensure that all schools and colleges will get the chance to try out the product at a later stage.

We will be looking at a number of features of your product to decide on the most appropriate tools to trial. These areas are reflected in the application form, and when shortlisting technology products we will look at each area and select products based on these features.

1. Existing evidence and readiness for evaluation/fit with evaluation designs

See above for our required standards of evidence.

2. Infrastructure and hardware requirements

Although there are no specific requirements for the EdTech products that will take part in the testbed, we need to remain flexible to the needs of schools. We will match schools and colleges with appropriate EdTech products that they are able to use with their existing hardware and infrastructure.

3. Fit with school/college preferences

We are currently recruiting schools and colleges to take part in the EdTech Innovation Testbed. As part of the application process, we are asking them about the specific challenges in their schools/colleges and what kinds of features of technology tools they are most interested in trialling. This will then help us select products that are most suited to school and college needs.

4. Cost

We want to make sure that schools and colleges are able to afford to continue to use the product after the trial, if they wish. We will work with schools and colleges during the matchmaking phase to understand if a product is affordable to them in the longer-term.

5. Support for schools with training and implementation

We know that good implementation and support is often crucial to the success of a tool in a school/college. We will be looking for organisations who can demonstrate appropriate support for schools/colleges on implementing and using their product.

6. Product fit with the programme

We will be looking for a range of products to be included in the testbed and may make decisions on the suitability of a product to be part of a trial based on the product itself and its link to the three challenge areas that we are focused on for the EdTech testbed.

7. Commitment to the programme

We will expect all EdTech organisations taking part in the testbed to commit to:

• Working collaboratively with Nesta, the evaluation delivery partner, schools and colleges for the duration of the trial period and to share learning widely, including:
  • High quality implementation and training for schools and colleges involved in the trial;
  • Meetings with trial schools and colleges at the beginning of the trial and as needed throughout;
  • Troubleshooting for schools/colleges involved during the trial period;
  • Support the evaluation delivery partner during the trial, as needed.

We will ask all EdTech organisations to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that states roles and responsibilities for different parties.

• Having a dedicated lead contact who will communicate with Nesta, the evaluation partner and schools or colleges throughout the programme;
• Being committed to improving the standard of evidence for the technology product being tested;
• Being open and transparent with research findings, including sharing learning with other EdTech organisations, schools and colleges;
• Attending relevant events or workshops, as appropriate, throughout the trial;
• Meeting a high standard of digital security, protecting young people from access to online harms, and ensuring GDPR-compliant data protection.

Participating EdTech organisations will receive support throughout the programme to ensure the trials are not overly burdensome:

• Financial support so that EdTech products are free for schools and colleges for the duration of the trial and up to one year in total. The exact amount of funding available for EdTech organisations will depend on the need and costs of the product.
• Support from our independent evaluation partner, Durham University Evidence Centre for Education, to trial your product in a number of schools and/or colleges in England. The independent evaluator will design the trial, support schools and colleges through the process and help with data collection and analysis.

EdTech products interested in taking part will need to fill in an application form online which asks questions about your product, any evidence that you already have for your product’s impact, costs and your hardware and infrastructure requirements. Nesta and Durham University Evidence Centre for Education will then produce a shortlist of potential EdTech products and ask more specific questions of each organisation, as needed to support the matchmaking process with schools and colleges. The final selection of EdTech products will be made in early 2020.

Organisations are eligible to apply for both the EdTech Innovation Fund and Testbed. These are separate programmes and will have a separate selection process. Some of the questions in the application form for the EdTech Innovation Testbed are similar to those in the Fund, but we do ask all applicants to complete a new application form.

We recognise that submitting a second application is a demand on your time. For any organisations who previously applied to the EdTech Innovation Fund and want to discuss their suitability for the Testbed with Nesta staff, please do get in touch via [email protected].

Application Stage:

• 1st November: Applications for EdTech products open.
• 2nd December, 9am: Applications for EdTech products close.
• Shortlisted products for participation in the Testbed will be notified in early January. Please note, being shortlisted does not guarantee participation in the Testbed (although we expect the majority of shortlisted tools to participate).

Matchmaking stage:

• Spring Term 2020: Matchmaking of EdTech products with schools and colleges

Trials and evaluation:

• Summer Term 2020: First trials begin. Subsequent trials will begin each term until Summer 2021.

Schools and colleges who apply to take part are able to suggest EdTech products that they are already using or EdTech products that they specifically want to trial. If a school or college is already using an EdTech product before the trial begins, this will impact on the ability for an independent and robust trial to be designed, although our evaluators will consider how to work around this. If a school or college is particularly interested in trialling a specific product that they have not yet started using, we would do our best to take this into account but would not be able to guarantee this.

Read the Terms and Conditions for EdTech organisations.

Read the EdTech Innovation Testbed Privacy Notice for EdTech companies [PDF], and Nesta’s Privacy Policy.

For any other questions not answered here, contact us at [email protected] and we will get back to you as soon as we can.