Budgets are always tight in education. So we thought that the YouGov survey which has just come out was particularly interesting.
They asked more than 1,000 teachers whether they thought that the education technology that they were using was worth the money. Apparently 87% of them said ‘No’.
If you want the detail, it’s here. YouGov Edtech Survey for Juniper Education
As tech is consuming an increasing proportion of school budgets this is an important statistic. Although if you work in a school you may not be surprised.
There are many reasons why this feeling abounds. Poor training and support provided by the software providers is clearly a factor but in many cases schools are still using software originally written ten, or even twenty years ago and in the intervening period the demands on teachers have increased and changed while the systems in the schools haven’t.
This is particularly the case in special education where the focus on individualised learning has insidiously multiplied workload since 2015. This where the Earwig technology packages really score highly.
Fewer than 30% of special schools and SEN provisions are currently rated Outstanding by Ofsted. Almost 60% of Earwig users are Outstanding.
Most of the Outstanding schools reviewed by Ofsted since 2020 have been downgraded. No Earwig special school has suffered this fate.
There’s a reason Earwig is the country’s number one SEN assessment software.