EdTech Estonia

Estonia is contributing to the development of its education technology sector (EdTech) in the framework of the National Education Strategy and Development Plan.

The strategic objective is to support the creation of a learner-centred education system that supports the autonomous learner – the personal capacity of each learner to set goals and plan their development.

Purpose and objectives
The main objective of the cooperation is to establish new EdTech services, to provide various programmes to promote the further science-based development of these services and enterprises, and to assist in export activities. Through this cooperation, the country aims to capture many of the services needed to create an interoperable education service system, which means that education service providers will share data to provide a more personalised learning experience for each student. The Ministry of Education and Research is working on building a digital infrastructure to facilitate data sharing.

Background to the opinion
The collaboration started in 2018 when the government funded the establishment of an EdTech priority area in a government-funded organisation called StartUp Estonia. Since then, the EdTech sector has grown significantly during the cooperation, to triple the number of service providers, increase turnover by 168% between 2017 and 2021, and increase employment in the sector by 81%.

The programme aimed to foster the development of a supportive community of EdTech start-ups. To this end, they have started to bring disruptive educational innovations closer to schools, including helping to bring new Estonian EdTech start-ups to market and supporting existing EdTech start-ups to become the country’s next success stories worldwide.

The programme is funded by the Ministry of Education and Research and the European Regional Fund in cooperation with the Ministry of Economy and Communication. The country sees the development of the EdTech sector, which has been going on for 50 years, as an educational need and an economic opportunity.

In 2020, the sector and the community have reached the level to establish an umbrella organisation in the form of EdTech Estonia. The Ministry has since signed a strategic partnership agreement with the organisation, and commitments and funding for the development of the sector have increasingly moved to EdTech Estonia.

Why is this good practice?
EdTech Estonia currently provides all relevant lifecycle support for service providers in the sector, which helped Estonia to be named a Bett International EdTech Programme in 2021.

Estonia has generally prioritised high levels of interoperability between its IT systems in its public administration. This has led to a high level of administrative capacity in the public sector in general, but also in education. Student and teacher data are easily exchanged between different administrative systems that have the appropriate authorisation. However, further cooperation between the public and private sectors is crucial to further develop the capacity of the education system to ensure the development of truly self-directed learners through technology.

A first step to establish common goals in this respect between private and public actors was set out in a Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation between EdTech Estonia as the representative of the corporate sector and various ministries in 2022. The document outlines responsibilities and common goals and provides a framework for further future cooperation.