Tech Won’t Save Schools — Unless We Face the Real Crisis
- Krzysztof Kosman
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Is EdTech Solving the Wrong Problem?
Each year, education conferences unveil the latest jaw-dropping gadget: a voice-powered AI tutor, virtual reality classroom, or slick app that “disrupts” learning. Yet after the lights fade and the keynote ends, the real world of global education looks starkly different. Millions of children around the world are learning without reliable teachers, safe classrooms, books — even electricity.
The tech sector often obsesses over the next big EdTech thing, but fails to address the gaping holes beneath the waterline: basic learning, human support, and environments where technology could matter at all.
EdTech evangelists promise “digital transformation” as a path to resolve deep educational inequities. But can any tool fix education if the foundations are broken? Or have we simply become addicted to solving the problems we wish we had, instead of the ones students live with every day?
The Context: A Global Learning Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight
This disconnect isn’t just speculation. It’s a daily reality for educators and students — especially in vulnerable communities worldwide. While entrepreneurs and VCs were chasing the next scalable AI-powered idea, the pandemic highlighted just how deep the global education gap runs. According to UNICEF and multiple agencies:
Learning poverty: Nearly two-thirds of 10-year-olds globally can’t read and understand a simple story (unicefusa.org).
Out of school: 244 million children and youth are out of school entirely (unesco.org).
Education in crisis zones: Over 234 million children live where education is disrupted due to war or disaster (kirkonulkomaanapu.fi).
Severe teacher shortages: The world needs 44 million new teachers by 2030 to achieve its education goals (globalteacherprize.org).
An entire generation risks growing up under-educated — unable to access jobs, defend their rights, or navigate their future. Yet so much EdTech funding still floods towards the “top,” not the basics: dazzling features, but not literacy, not teachers, not stable infrastructure.
Flashy Solutions vs. Fundamental Needs: Olli Vallo’s Warning
Why is there such dissonance between shiny EdTech demos and lived reality in schools? Olli Vallo — a former teacher, EdTech strategist, and program lead at UNICEF’s “EdTech for Good” — has seen both sides. Vallo warns of a dangerous mismatch:
“In many developing regions, the most urgent educational challenges remain basic — there’s a shortage of qualified teachers and inadequate resources. Yet tech initiatives often focus on scale before basic readiness, leading to pilots that fail at the first hurdle — because there’s no electricity, or no one on staff knows how to use the tools.”
Vallo’s experiences at UNICEF are a masterclass in local context. He insists: success comes when education software is co-designed for local needs, respecting language, culture, and the realities on the ground — not when it’s air-dropped from Silicon Valley into vastly different learning environments.
When School Tech Meets Reality: Why Many Interventions Fail
History is littered with failed EdTech projects. Shipment of laptops, tablets, or learning platforms rarely translate to impact without groundwork. UNESCO’s global report finds simply giving students devices does not improve learning unless robust teacher support and curriculum alignment are present (unesco.org):
No electricity or connectivity: 1 in 4 primary schools worldwide lack electricity. A tablet with no power or a learning platform with no connection = useless.
Untrained staff: Many educators are offered digital tools with zero training. Adoption stalls, or a dead battery halts the classroom because no one can replace it (Cambridge University Press).
Misaligned content: EdTech not suited for the local curriculum — especially in non-English-speaking or rural communities — is discarded fast (One Laptop Per Child’s lessons).
No maintenance/support: Without a repair plan, edtech ends up as electronic waste. In Uruguay, a quarter of laptops in a national EdTech push failed due to lack of support (bu.edu).
Your gadget is only as good as your weakest context. Tech can amplify good teaching — but it can’t stand in for it, nor can it build the human infrastructure needed when those structures are missing.
When Context Is King: EdTech That Actually Works
There are success stories — and they all share one trait: context-first design. Examples:
Text-based mobile teacher training: In remote India and sub-Saharan Africa, simple SMS and radio programs have scaled up mentorship and curriculum updates to underprepared teachers. When Wi-Fi fails, the mobile phone often still works.
Solar-powered radio education: In crisis zones, radio programs teach lessons when schools and internet are unavailable.
AI tailored for local needs: Startups in low-resource settings now increasingly design generative AI tools for local languages, curricula, and even cultural references (see UNICEF’s case studies).
These approaches don’t treat tech as a panacea, but a tool to strengthen human relationships and fill real gaps. Where schools and communities embrace the tech (rather than being “sold” it), it sticks.
The Scalability Trap: Rethinking EdTech Incentives
Why does the global EdTech industry keep peddling grand solutions in unprepared environments? Here’s where tech-world logic goes astray:
Scalability obsession: Investors/VCs want products that “work everywhere,” but education is local — not SaaS. A photo sharing app’s logic doesn’t map to a classroom in rural Malawi.
Pilot-itis: New platforms are pushed out for marketing gains, often without rigorous data on their learning impact. Distribution counts, not actual literacy growth (UNESCO warns that only a tiny share of EdTech passes strong evidence standards).
The real scaling need: Countries must scale real basics — teacher recruitment, textbooks, school buildings, safe spaces for learning. Those will never be as “sexy,” but they work.
“There is no shortcut around the basics,” as education leaders love to remind us. Data shows again and again: leapfrogging ahead with ungrounded tech is a recipe for collapse.
What’s Next? Foundations First, Tech Second
So: could EdTech still play a transformative role? Yes — if we reimagine the order of operations.
Empower teachers and communities: Don’t design for them, design with them — respond to real educational pain points (Olli Vallo: “Start small, go deep, only then scale.”).
Train and support the workforce: Teacher upskilling, mentorship, and career growth need as much investment as any new device.
Customize for context: Translate, adapt, localize. Tweak content, pedagogy, and system logic for local conditions — not just limited language toggles!
Demand evidence before scale: Philanthropies, governments, and investors: require real-world learning outcomes and maintenance plans, not just marketing demos.
The ultimate test: would your EdTech tool matter if dropped into a classroom with unreliable power and no regular teacher? Or is your innovation another expensive bandaid?
Further Reading & Related Stories
Will We Ask More of Ourselves?
If we’re honest, blaming “the system” or chasing tech’s easy fixes lets us all avoid the much harder realities: education is a human project, not a coding problem. The best EdTech of the future will be the background tool — steady as a chalkboard, intuitive as a book — enabling real, on-the-ground magic only possible with strong basic foundations in place. Deficits in teachers and literacy cannot be closed, even with the most advanced AI, until we make those core investments. When we fix education’s root crises, technology will have its time to shine — as a multiplier for progress, not a distraction.
What foundational need would you prioritize first, before the next piece of EdTech? What would you challenge your team or community to focus on that has nothing to do with gadgets, and everything to do with learning?
UNICEF, UNESCO, Global Teacher Prize (see details and full links above)