This year has been truly unprecedented. As the Covid-19 pandemic has swept across the world, it has resulted in seismic shifts in our everyday lives.
Nowhere has this been seen more than in education, and in education technology in particular. Figures published in October by AdEPT Technology Group show that the adoption of educational technology has soared by 131% this year compared to the whole of 2019. The pandemic has also transformed the learning experience of so many - of all ages - emphasising and highlighting a growing desire for digital transformation.
In many ways, as in other sectors, we are seeing an acceleration of changes that already existed. Online learning, for instance, previously a key point within a university’s five-year roadmap, has now become an integral part of courses underway right now. Jacqueline Daniell, Chief Executive of Wey Education, which runs online school InterHigh, believes the pandemic has accelerated global adoption of edtech in schools and colleges by about five years - while others suggest it may have advanced its development yet further still.
With this acceleration, the benefits of edtech are becoming increasingly well-known. As our partners, Owl Ventures (the largest edtech focussed fund in the world), recently set out in their 2020 report, there is a digital revolution rapidly unfolding in the education and workforce-development sectors:
The global education market is set to rise from $6 trillion in 2020, to up to $25 trillion in 2030. It is estimated that the next decade will see an additional 800 million K-12 graduates and 350 million post-secondary-school graduates more than today; and — with unprecedented demand for upskilling and reskilling — there is a surge in the value of education in the workforce. With historic market challenges — of infrastructure, capital and talent — being rapidly removed, we are now in a time where there is a fundamental acknowledgment that education technology will have a profound effect on the billions of worldwide learners of all ages.
By the middle of this year, edtech funding for 2020 had already reached $4.1b. This doesn't include a recently closed $200 million funding round for India’s online education startup Byju’s, from investors including BlackRock Inc. and T. Rowe Price Group Inc. as demand for such classes skyrockets during the coronavirus pandemic.
It is evident that edtech is highly in demand, and very much here to stay. Institutions will require yet more complex and sophisticated edtech solutions to make this work. This year's lessons won’t be quickly forgotten, and as we emerge from the other side of this health crisis it is very likely that we’ll see edtech used less as simply a means of ensuring education’s continuity, but instead realising its potential to enrich the learning experience of all students.
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Owl's Emerging Trends in 2020 & it's impact on the EdTech ecosystem
The impact of the crises on ed-tech is far-reaching, and the importance for high-quality, scaled education technology has never been greater.
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1. Increased demand for EdTech
Ed-tech startups have experienced explosive demand. As the US, Europe and Asia cancel in-person classes, traditional classrooms are rushing to implement comprehensive, remote-learning solutions. In U.S. K-12 schools, after pandemic-related school closures, there was a 90% average increase in tools accessed each month. In a Inside Higher Ed survey of 187 university presidents, 98% of respondents had moved a majority of classes online. Increasing unemployment rates have put renewed pressure on employers and individuals to focus on reskilling and upskilling.
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2. Need to be nimble
The COVID-19 pandemic marks a profound turning point in the market, as educational institutions from here on out will need to be prepared and ready to deploy technology at scale as they continue to leverage distance- and hybrid- learning models to support all their students. For those in the workforce, the current reality of working remotely has increased the need for online solutions that can support remote hiring, training and learning best practices.
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3. Solving for the at-home digital divide
Among the many inequalities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the digital divide is not only one of the most stark, but also, among the most surprising. According to UNESCO, only 55% of households globally have internet, and that number drops to 19% in the least-developed countries. A recent, Pew Research Center study estimated that, in the United States, roughly one-third (35%) of households with children ages 6 to 17 and annual incomes below $30,000 a year do not have high-speed internet connections at home. It is clear that there is a digital divide globally and that the divide disproportionately affects learners from low-income families and persons of color — which further increases the achievement gap.
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4. Addressing the mental health crisis
Remarking the new realities of the pandemic — working from home, temporary unemployment, home-schooling of children, and lack of physical contact — experts warn that a historic wave of mental-health problems is here. In a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, nearly half (45%) of adults in the United States reported that their mental health has been negatively impacted due to worry and stress over the virus. A Center for Promise survey indicated that more than one in four young persons reported an increase in losing sleep, because of worry, feeling unhappy or depressed, feeling constantly under strain, or experiencing a loss of confidence in themselves. It goes without saying that this data is both sobering, and worrying.
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Watch an interview which is part of Learnerbly's Expert Interview Series:
"This is a watershed moment for EdTech": A conversation with Bernhard Niesner on what businesses need to survive COVID-19
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Challenge Investing
Within our universe, we have a significant number of companies that are helping to profitably address the global challenge of Education.
If you’d like to invest in some of the most promising growth companies based on top research then please don't hesitate to get in touch.
This comes with very best wishes from everyone at Future Planet Capital.
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