Startups | Professor Rose Luckin's EDUCATE

The most successful EdTech businesses combine technological innovation with an understanding of the needs of learners. In the ERDF part-funded EDUCATE Accelerator Programme, we use our expertise in educational research to build capacity in EdTech companies so that they can develop evidence-informed products that have a measurable impact on learners.

Helping EdTech startups make an impact

The EDUCATE Accelerator Programme

The EDUCATE Programme is an ERDF part-funded EdTech research accelerator run by globally recognised partners, F6S, BESA, and EDUCATE Ventures Research Ltd.

The EDUCATE Programme promotes excellence in the EdTech community by providing training and mentoring to support and promote the use of evidence-informed EdTech. Our research-focused accelerator, based on the Golden Triangle, bridges the gaps between EdTech designers and developers, researchers in education and EdTech, and users, to ensure that EdTech products live up to their promises.

Since 2017, we have worked with 272 startups and some of the brightest and best innovators in the UK and globally. Our companies are at the cutting edge of technological advances in EdTech, and understand how to harness the power of emerging technologies, like AI, to serve the needs of their users. Entrepreneurs and innovators can be confident that access to reputable evidence will assist them in developing world-class products and services that are effective and commercially viable. Furthermore, our focus on “what works” and the importance of an evidence-base helps developers to conduct their own research into their designs and products, to communicate effectiveness and to help them shape its future development.

Vision

The EDUCATE Programme envisions an EdTech ecosystem that is populated by research-minded enterprises, building excellent, evidence-informed learning tools to empower human intelligence.

APPLY NOW

Mission

To accelerate a research mindset in EdTech SMEs to develop evidence-informed products to benefit human learning. We use our expertise in educational research to support, train and mentor the EdTech community in the development of research skills, ensuring products made for teaching and learning really do work.

The User Journey:

Provide live teaching and 1:1 mentoring from EDUCATE research mentors
Give you access to exclusive Q&A's, workshops and supplementary online material
Help you to create a Logic Model and develop a Research Proposal that works for your company
Give you access to the EDUCATE Ventures Research online community, interact with a wide range of EdTech stakeholders

Applying:

In order to be eligible for the programme you must:

Have your business registered in Greater London, UK
Explain why your product or service has educational merit
Engage with research and a research mentor
Conform to the following definition of an SME (Small to Medium Enterprise):
- less than 250 employees
- annual turnover less than €50m (approximately £43.2m); balance sheet less than €43m (approximately £37.2m)
- the business is less than 25% owned by entities not meeting these criteria

Research Outcomes

8 research studies and 1 thesis, for which a doctorate was awarded in 2020, were conducted on the EDUCATE Programme in it's initial 2017-2019 incarnation, and 4 of those studies have now been published. You can read the studies on our Research page.

Read the Research

Accelerator Programme Testimonials

"the key benefit was that it clarified the approaches we need to take to ensure that Atom Learning was constantly improving as a product to meet the needs of learners. If you are offering on-line learning platform then it must be academically rigorous because you want to have the most positive impact possible on the pupils using it"