Page 7 - Winter 2025

• 32,000 schools and 165 higher education without relying on facial recognition. It supports The approach works exceptionally well for
institutions multiple modalities, including live invigilation and individuals who are reclined in their chairs or laying
record-and-review, while providing additional tools supine in beds, as staff can see improvements in
• UK schools spend more than £900 million a year for improved monitoring. visual tracking and attention.
on edtech with an average edtech budget of
£80,000 per school Completing the suite is SmarTest Nexus, a Now, we have a stable baseline to assess
comprehensive candidate management and test visual needs and determine preferences with
• Over 70 per cent of children in British schools centre management system. It simplifies key areas
use laptops and tablets such as payment processing, registration, voucher
• The UK is Europe’s largest tech market with an generation, eligibility checks, venue coordination,
average of 7 per cent year-on-year growth and test-day logistics and remote invigilation”
a startup/scaleup ecosystem that is valued at Elsewhere is Classoos, a single platform for accessing
3459 billion online (digital) textbooks:
• Since the pandemic UK businesses have “Classoos enables textbooks to come to life;
brought forward the planned digitisation of their teachers and students can create overlays which
operations by an average of three to four years include supplementary content including external

Students were shown an image of Canadian soldiers • One in four of Europe’s edtech startups is based links (pictures, audio, video) as well as notes and
in a trench in 1918, the details of which the students in the UK bookmarks”.
were challenged to identify. The subsequent Pupil Progress has a mission to transform how schools
• Since operations began in 2004 the UK
generation of ideas was penned onto a screen. use data with a platform that provides exam-board-
Government’s flagship Global Entrepreneur
Technology was clearly used as a lesson enhancer Programme has successfully attracted over specific live tracking tools that simplify student
with One Note being notably totally searchable with 1,100 high-potential tech entrepreneure and progress at subject, topic and skill levels:
video and audio resources fully accessible. This their IP-rich businesses ‘ Our intuitive system centralises performance data
helps students working at home as well as in class, into a single point of truth, giving educators clarity
providing a real benefit to those with additional and confidence. Teachers save time with pre-built,
needs. Students can adapt information “on the fly” live trackers that calculate grades exactly as exam
rather than requiring the teacher to enlarge text, for boards do, enabling quick, actionable insights for
example. lesson planning, curriculum refinement and parental
A knowledge organiser is used to annotate text from communication’.
a textbook page in One Note and all students carry Also featured is Venture Simulations Limited, Winner of
headphones so that they can access information the ‘Education and EdTech’ category in the Made in the the convenience of being able to change
and link with One Note. Mentimeter is used to rank UK, Sold to the World Awards 2024. backgrounds, images, animations, high contrast
issues raised by students about the lesson, such as visual tracking effects and more at any time.
those most likely to be of concern to those involved in This also means we can maximise meaningful
trench warfare, such as constant shelling and ‘trench Introducing the Magic Room engagements for pupils as soon as they are ready
foot’. to engage”.
Exhibitors Sensory Guru are specialists in creating
It was concluded that EdTech assists collaboration, immersive learning environments and at Bett 2025
reducing the need for photocopying and chasing they showcased the Magic Room, a system that allows The Future Forest Experience
issues. When asked about how these devices helped students to use various assistive technologies and
Avantis Education and Rainforest UK have joined
with learning, the student response was that it made augmentative and alternative communication devices
together to produce a new Future Forest Experience that
learning “much more interesting”. When asked if such as iPads, tablets, switches, speech, breath and eye
was revealed for the first time at Bett 2025.
he would recommend One Note, another student gaze to interact with learning materials.
replied by saying that it was good for looking back at Using resources from Eduverse+, the new Future
The Magic Room has notably been implemented at
revision and helped with spelling and grammar. Forest Experience takes visitors on a journey that
Charlton Park Academy in London in 32 classrooms
shows the beauty of planet Earth, the dangers it is
Questions from the audience followed, including one so as to create immersive learning environments
facing and the consequences of doing nothing.
that raised the issue of the amount of work involved that cater for the diverse needs of pupils with
in learning to use the technology. In reply Ms. Fletcher profound and multiple learning difficulties, severe A free education pack has been produced which can
With this backdrop the DBT headed a line-up of
emphasised that it was “not about doing everything learning difficulties, autism spectrum conditions and be taken into schools to enable the experience to be
eighteen exhibitors at the UK Pavilion, beginning with
all at once” and went on to explain how ‘digital cerebral visual impairment (a disorder that notably shared with other students and colleagues.
Manchester-based Certify Assessment Solutions, who
leaders’ had been trained to help their peers in this affects the brain’s vision processing areas such that
specialise in innovative and secure assessment and
regard. multisensory inputs become even more crucial).
invigilation solutions, including SmarTest Examiner:
Karen Panter, a PMLD teacher at Charlton Park
“SmarTest Examiner streamlines the entire
Department for Business and assessment lifecycle, enabling organisations to Academy, states:
Trade champions British EdTech author exams, deliver online assessments, and “ Sensory Guru created a projection unit for our
automate scoring and reporting. pupils that can display images onto walls or
The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has
ceilings, allowing visuals to be projected onto any
published its own guide to Bett 2025 in which it SmarTest Invigilate offers robust AI-assisted
presents the following statistics to illustrate why the invigilation with advanced features such as eye- surface. This has been a game-changer for our
UK is a large market for EdTech: tracking technology, to uphold exams integrity pupils.
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