Improving educational outcomes – especially for students experiencing disadvantage – should be the highest priority across the education sector and a key focus for government. This relies on the skilled delivery of high-quality curriculum, which is increasingly mediated by educational technology. Yet a crowded and rapidly growing market makes it difficult for teachers, schools or parents to know which applications are high quality and useful. 

This report considers a selection of international and Australian quality assurance mechanisms for educational resources, to identify key quality domains assessed and common components of the processes themselves. The report argues for a national quality assurance process for edtech, with clear criteria and robust and transparent assessment process. 

The growing centrality of technology in teaching and learning comes with benefits. Educational technology (edtech) has the potential to help overcome longstanding inequalities through its capacity to support curriculum access and success for a wider range of learners, including students experiencing disadvantage. The edtech market is burgeoning – for example, some 500,000 learning apps can be found on the Apple and Google app stores, with more marketed directly to schools – but there is no independent, comprehensive source of information about the quality of digitally enabled educational resources in Australia.