Bursting EdTech’s “Impact” Bubble (Part 1)
Why the buzzwords won't work much longer and what this shift means for startups.
In 2026, edtech marketing is moving away from peppering websites and outreach emails with ‘impactful’, ‘innovative’ and other flimsy claims.
Even ‘proven’ impact is usually limited to showing that children who use a learning platform more, perform better i.e. more practice = better test results.
That’s a low baseline, feeding false promises of “transformative” technologies, and a barrier for those tackling less easily-measured educational challenges.
Before you dismiss EdTech 2.0 as regulation, consider spending 10 mins/week with me, to understand what it means for you, in straightforward language.
Hi, I’m Rebekah 👋 I help education companies communicate their value in ways that actually resonate with buyers in schools. I work with mission-driven startups and SMEs to build a strong foundation of consistent, coherent messaging.
This is Part 1 of a series for Founders and CEOs wondering whether evidencing the impact of educational products is worth it, or even feasible.
Today’s intro to this crash course covers:
Defining impact
It all starts with the word itself. ‘Impact’ isn’t a protected term.
You can’t claim medicine is effective without trials showing statistically significant improvements, yet education products claim to be impactful without any evidence.
This is partly because the word impact carries different meanings depending on the context.
Bear with me here.
When we were renovating our house, this is what an impact driver meant:
Impact is usually thought of as the result of an action i.e. when a hammer strikes a nail over a floorboard, the impact is the nail embedded in the floor (and beam below).
Even in the field of impact evaluation, definitions of impact are blurred with common meanings, with broadly two scopes of various studies measuring “impact”1:
Comparing before vs after or with vs without, usually short-term outcomes
Tracking longer-term outcomes, using multiple measurements and methods
The biggest hurdle for both is causality.
Crucially, you have to prove the result happened because of your product, rather than a brilliant teacher getting excellent results in spite of a mediocre tool.
We’ll break down what this means for edtech startups later in the series.
Evidence-based Education
Over the last decade, the way school leaders make decisions has fundamentally changed.
A large body of research shows that data practices are increasingly embedded in the professional lives of teachers and school leaders2.
Meanwhile, edtech marketing became about number-driven claims designed purely to persuade.
Selling was easier if you could point to impressive-looking graphs, even if those numbers were (the extremes of) vanity metrics or based on the top 5% of students or a small trial.
It’s not growth - winning customers on false or flimsy claims is just delayed churn.
In a school leader’s shoes…
With very little time to make highly consequential decisions, especially when under pressure to improve student outcomes, it’s incredibly difficult to evaluate whether the “evidence” actually backs up the claim.
If “evidence” is just usage metrics, you’re selling digital presenteeism.
If the number or graph looks convincing enough, it’s difficult to argue with.
Most founders aren’t trying to mislead.
This has been the status quo, what “good” looks like.
Now, with established companies and startups all pushing “innovative” new tools or using AI in existing platforms, decisions are even more fraught with privacy and security concerns.
The new baseline?
The UK government’s support for EdTech Testbeds signals something of a shift towards evidence-first approaches that have already reshaped the US market.
Companies at BETT Global 2026 are already moving beyond shallow claims:
‘When I asked companies what research supported their claims of “educational impact,” they didn’t shrug or point to slogans; they handed me their impact brochures. Many were still thin, still perception-driven, but the change was undeniable: the era of EdTech thriving solely on engagement is finally starting to close.’
Prof Natalia Kurcikova, Professor and Director of The International Centre for EdTech Impact
UNICEF is calling on national governments to move in this direction, with their EdTech for Good Framework embedding similar principles (including for children’s rights and privacy).
What you can do today
CTRL+F on your website, email templates or pitch deck for mentions of ‘impact’.
To see if they have a meaning at all, ask “how” e.g. if your product is claiming to be ‘impactful’ or to ‘...impact outcomes’ - well, how? If you can’t answer that, you have a problem.
If you can point to a measured change, is that data or study accessible for someone to look at? If not, why not?
Look at the numbers you use elsewhere to persuade. Are you using the same growth metrics in your pitch deck on your webpage meant for school leaders?
Subscribe to these short weekly digests.
Wherever you are in your journey and whichever education sector you’re building for, it’s time to prepare for the shift.
What do we mean by ‘impact’? (https://www.betterevaluation.org/blog/what-do-we-mean-impact). Note the definition of impact is the change due to an ‘intervention’ - another word with multiple meanings!
Some recent studies: for a small in-depth study in an English secondary school, see e.g. Grant, 2024 https://doi.org/10.1177/00345237241257177; introduction to ‘platformed professional(itie)s’, see e.g. Hartong and Decuypere (2023) https://elibrary.utb.de/doi/pdf/10.31244/tc.2023.01.01