Why Schools Struggle to Keep Pace with EdTech Innovation And Why We Must Change That Now.
A new academic year! The air hums with fresh starts — polished shoes, unopened exercise books, and staff rooms are starting to fill with plans and possibilities.
For school leaders, it’s a time to ask not only what we’ll teach, but how we’ll prepare our pupils for a world that is transforming before our eyes - especially when it comes to the evolving landscape of tech. But year after year, when I speak to colleagues around the world - one truth stares us in the face. Most schools struggle to keep pace with change.
It’s not because educators resist it - although if we're honest, they sometimes do! I’ve worked with incredible teachers and leaders whose passion for their pupils is boundless. But schools often operate under relentless pressure. They're faced with government directives, curriculum changes, accreditation visits, safeguarding reviews, budget constraints, and the everyday unpredictability of supporting hundreds (if not thousands) of young lives.
In this whirlwind, all innovation gets pushed from urgent to 'when we have time'.
And time is the one thing schools never really have enough of.
But this is more than an operational problem — it’s a moral one.
Whilst industries outside education adapt in weeks and months to the latest apps and technology, schools can take years to embed new practice. And whilst our pupils wait, technology, especially AI, is evolving at a breathtaking pace.
The pace of technological change is accelerating leaving school practice behind.
By the time a promising idea weaves its way through policies, permissions, and professional development, our pupils’ world has already moved on, and the technology has been replaced by something new.
The result? A widening gap between what is possible and what is happening.
And in that gap, opportunities for our pupils quietly drain away.
Today, the stakes are higher than at any other point in history for two key reasons.
The tools shaping our pupils’ futures are no longer on the horizon; they’re already here, influencing the world they will inherit.
As the CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman has explained, "in the past, new jobs were created at the same time as old ones were made obsolete, but what if AI could simply do most of these as well?"
We can close the gap. But it will take deliberate action.
We must stop treating innovation as an optional extra.
Innovation and integration needs to be built into the DNA. We must forge stronger partnerships between schools and industry, so ideas are co-created by those who understand technology and those who understand classrooms. And we must empower teachers to trial, adapt, and refine with the freedom to experiment and the trust to fail.
As this new academic year begins, my challenge to fellow school leaders is this: choose one bold change and make it happen now, not 'someday'.
The future our pupils are walking into will not wait for us to catch up.
Every day we delay, the gap widens. And every day we act, we close it.
