EdTech Impact

EdTech Impact, founded in 2018 by Michael Forshaw and headquartered in the United Kingdom, operates as a media and information services company within the education technology sector. The company provides an online marketplace and evaluation platform designed to help educational institutions discover, compare, and make informed decisions about EdTech products.

The platform was born out of Forshaw's extensive experience in the education field, spanning over 17 years. His journey began with managing digital transformation projects in schools, which gave him firsthand insight into the challenges educators face when selecting technology. Prior to EdTech Impact, Forshaw founded Innovate My School, a community for teachers to share ideas, which highlighted the growing need for a transparent and equitable marketplace for EdTech solutions. He observed that the market was crowded with competing products, often making it difficult for schools to identify the most suitable tools, and recognized that visibility was frequently tied to a company's marketing budget rather than the quality of its product. This led to the creation of EdTech Impact as an independent review platform.

EdTech Impact functions as a comprehensive, free-to-use search engine for educators, cataloging over 1,600 global EdTech companies across more than 60 categories. The platform's core value proposition is its repository of over 10,000 vetted, independent reviews from frontline educators, which allows schools to assess how products perform in various contexts. A key feature is the "schools like mine" search tool, enabling institutions to find technology being used by schools with similar characteristics. The platform's assessment framework, developed in partnership with University College London, evaluates products on multiple criteria, including evidence of impact, user experience, pedagogical design, data security, and algorithmic fairness. This provides qualitative and quantitative feedback on how products affect student, teacher, and parent outcomes.

The company's business model is based on a freemium structure. While the platform is free for schools to use, EdTech companies pay for access to additional features and data-driven insights to improve their products and connect with potential buyers. EdTech Impact maintains that it does not permit paid placements in its ratings or rankings, ensuring the transparency and independence of the reviews. Over 2,000 companies utilize the platform to showcase their evidence base to a marketplace of more than 400,000 potential buyers.

Keywords: EdTech marketplace, education technology reviews, school procurement, edtech evaluation, Michael Forshaw, Innovate My School, edtech comparison platform, school technology, K-12 technology, digital learning tools, evidence-based edtech, UK edtech, classroom technology, education software, learning management systems, teacher feedback, school administration software, online learning platforms, student information systems, educational software reviews