What the Schools White Paper signals for technology in education
This analysis examines what the Schools White Paper signals for the role of technology in education, highlighting infrastructure investment, data reform and AI as enablers of wider system change. It explores emerging demand across digital platforms, interoperability and inclusion, alongside structural reforms that may reshape procurement, governance and delivery expectations.
We welcome the ambition set out in the Schools White Paper to build a more connected, inclusive, trusted, and data-driven education system. Investment in digital infrastructure and shared data foundations is the way forward. Digital capability will be key to improving outcomes and enabling more resilient integrated services for children and their families. To realise these benefits, government must go further to tackle system fragmentation, security challenges, and access to digital devices—all areas where techUK is already working with partners to support progress.
Antony Walker
Deputy CEO, techUK
The Schools White Paper sets out a long-term vision for reshaping the education system around stronger collaboration, inclusive mainstream education and a more integrated relationship between schools and wider public services. While much of the document is framed through broad educational ambition, there are clear signals for the technology sector.
Rather than positioning technology as a standalone reform area, the White Paper embeds digital infrastructure, AI and data within wider system transformation. This places technology providers less as peripheral suppliers and more as enablers of:
system level accountability
multi agency coordination
workforce capability
inclusive practice
operational efficiency at scale
For techUK members, the significance lies less in individual initiatives and more in how infrastructure investment, policy reform and structural change combine to reshape demand, procurement models and operational expectations.
Areas of activity and emerging tender opportunities
Before diving into the structural reform, the White Paper references several specific programmes, platforms and delivery mechanisms that may translate into future procurement activity or partnership opportunities. While many remain early stage or embedded within wider policy initiatives, the commitments below represent the clearest signals currently set out in the document.
Core Infrastructure Investment and Connectivity Programme: One of the most concrete commitments relates to continued investment in digital infrastructure, including a £325 million programme to improve connectivity and network capability across schools. This investment also underpins the broader ambition to standardise digital environments across the system.
Development of a New ‘Data Spine’: The White Paper explicitly commits to the development of a national “data spine”, positioned as a foundational element of future digital infrastructure for schools. The policy emphasis is on enabling connected information flows across currently fragmented systems, including SEND recording, attendance monitoring and wider education records. The spine is described as a mechanism for ensuring that new tools and platforms can operate within a shared digital architecture rather than in isolation.
One Stop Shop Digital Platform for Schools: The paper makes a clear commitment to building a new national digital platform intended to support school improvement through data insight. This signals development of a centralised analytics and improvement environment aligned to accountability reform.
School Profiles Service: The White Paper also expands on the concept of school profiles to present aggregated information about schools. While framed as a transparency measure, this implies development of structured data aggregation and presentation systems.
Digital Individual Support Plans (ISPs): SEND reform references the mandatory digitisation of support planning. This is one of the strongest operational signals in the document and indicates future demand for platforms supporting structured SEND workflows and coordinated digital records.
National Inclusion Standards and Digital Library: The paper contains clear signals of investment into standardised inclusion resources. This suggests future development of structured digital resources aligned to inclusion policy.
AI Tutoring Trialling and Industry Collaboration: Earlier commitments to developing AI tutoring tools in partnership with industry are reiterated throughout the White Paper. This is framed as a development programme rather than a defined procurement pathway.
Attendance and Engagement Data Tools: The White Paper’s commitment to “new data tools” to identify at-risk pupils early, before absence escalates. Attendance data is also explicitly included within the proposed data spine architecture. While not framed as a standalone national procurement, this position signals growing emphasis on predictive attendance analytics and early intervention capability within the wider data reform programme.
Single, Easy to Use Home for School Guidance: Development of a centralised digital guidance environment was signalled. While framed primarily as a policy simplification measure, this may involve platform development, content management infrastructure or structured knowledge environments.
Improved Complaints Handling and Home–School Communication: The White Paper introduces strengthened expectations around communication between schools and families, alongside improvements to complaints processes. The direction references the development of a new digital, accessible solution for handling complaints.
techUK analysis on the position of technology in the white paper
Investment and workforce development
As set out earlier, the White Paper makes two clear digital commitments: a £325 million investment in connectivity upgrades and the development of a national data spine. These are not peripheral measures. They form part of the foundational architecture for wider technology reform for school. This matters because many of the reforms elsewhere in the document depend on these investments. Statutory Individual Support Plans, attendance analytics, new school profiles and the proposed digital improvement platform all assume interoperable data flows. And the government’s ambition around the promise of AI is significantly dependent on the system receiving a significant boost in connectivity.
Alongside this however, the White Paper is clear that technology alone is not sufficient. Reform is framed as being delivered through workforce capability and collaboration as much as through digital systems. Teachers and leaders are expected to adopt evidence-based approaches to AI and technology, build confidence in digital pedagogy and make more strategic decisions about implementation. The new Teacher Training Entitlement and wider professional development commitments reinforce this direction.
The message is consistent and positive. Infrastructure is being strengthened, data systems are being connected, and leadership capacity is expected to rise in parallel. The opportunity for suppliers sits not only in the build of platforms and services, but in supporting implementation, change management and capability development across trusts and local systems.
Join up and integrated services
Another key feature of the White Paper, is the emphasis it places on schools as the ‘anchor’ to more integrated local systems, bringing together education, health and social care around shared outcomes. Digital infrastructure is continuously presented as a key enabler of this ambition.
Repeated references to improved data sharing and coordinated services suggest increasing demand for systems capable of:
rationalising and securing information exchange
reducing administrative duplication
supporting coordinated provision across multiple agencies.
With all this said, the operational details of this join-up remain limited. Governance models, technical standards and procurement pathways are not yet fully defined, leaving questions as about how these ambitions will translate into delivery.
Wider analysis of policy direction
Beyond specific digital programmes, the White Paper sets out a broader structural direction that provides important context for how reform is expected to unfold. These themes shape the operating environment within which technology, governance and delivery models will evolve.
System consolidation and academisation
The White Paper is explicit that collaboration and scale are central to its delivery model. It states that it will move towards all schools being part of school trusts, including the establishment of new trusts by local authorities or area partnerships.
This is a clear signal shift. While the document does not frame this as a rapid acceleration of academisation in the language used in previous policy cycles, the direction is unmistakable. Encouraging all schools to operate within trust structures, and explicitly enabling local authorities to establish trusts, marks a significant governance shift.
The inclusion of local authority established trusts is particularly noteworthy. It reflects an attempt to reconcile the commitment to trust based structures with Labour’s stated intention to take a more measured approach to academisation. However, this approach is not without contention. The mechanics of how local authorities will establish or sponsor trusts, how these will interact with existing multi academy trusts, and how accountability will operate across mixed governance models remain largely undefined in the document.
Alongside this, the White Paper recognises the current system as fragmented and repeatedly emphasises collaboration, shared services and partnership. Single academy trusts and small groups are implicitly encouraged to join or form larger trust structures to build capacity and share expertise. The intent is to create organisational scale capable of delivering inclusion, accountability and system improvement more consistently.
That said, consolidation alone does not automatically resolve the structural challenges the White Paper itself identifies. While moving towards trust level governance may reduce some fragmentation, it does not in itself guarantee economies of scale or shared technical capability, nor does it solve the challenge of scaling good practice across the system. Without clear expectations around shared services, pooled procurement or operational integration, consolidation risks reorganising fragmentation rather than eliminating it.
Inclusion and SEND reform
Inclusion sits at the centre of the White Paper’s vision, with a clear ambition to shift towards inclusive mainstream education supported by new digital Individual Support Plans and revised funding structures. The direction emphasises earlier identification, coordinated support and clearer accountability for outcomes.
At this stage, however, much of the reform remains conceptual rather than operational. While the policy language presents a more structured model of provision, sector commentary has already highlighted the potential for increased complexity rather than simplification. Proposals move beyond the current two-tier system of SEND Support and Education, Health and Care Plans towards a multi layered model, including universal, targeted, targeted plus and specialist provision.
This reflects an attempt to provide greater flexibility and earlier intervention, but it may also introduce additional administrative and coordination challenges unless implementation is supported by clear guidance, resourcing and of course the right digital infrastructure capable of managing increased complexity.
Accountability and data driven improvement
Finally, the White Paper reinforces the ongoing shift towards data informed accountability and continuous improvement. The direction suggests a move away from periodic, inspection led intervention towards more continuous monitoring and benchmarking. While this may support earlier identification of challenges, it also raises questions about data burden, interpretation and how schools will be supported to translate insight into meaningful improvement.
For the tech sector, the implication is that analytics and reporting environments are becoming increasingly embedded within governance and improvement processes.
Critical gap: devices, cyber, and delivery coherence
While infrastructure investment is significant, the White Paper remains notably cautious around device strategy or national approaches to hardware access. This is likely a deliberate choice given the political sensitivity of device mandates and the scale of investment required. However, it creates a structural tension.
Schools continue to operate within fragmented device ecosystems, with wide variation in:
procurement approaches
lifecycle management
technical support capacity
strategic digital planning.
There is also little reference to Cyber security, with security intimated primarily through commitments to infrastructure, privacy-respecting data architecture and updated digital standards. However, it is not foregrounded as a standalone strategic priority. The ambition to connect systems, standardise data flows and embed AI within school processes is welcome.
Without a clearer articulation of an overarching technology vision for England’s school system, the focus on improved connectivity at one end, and assured AI and edtech market simulation at the other, risks curtailing meaningful transformation. This echoes a central finding from techUK’s Digital Maturity Gap work, where participants repeatedly highlighted the absence of a shared “north star” guiding digital change across the system. While the White Paper sets out important building blocks, the challenge now is ensuring these individual strands form part of a coherent direction that aligns policy, practice and investment, rather than progressing as parallel initiatives without a unifying framework.
Austin Earl
Programme Manager, Education and EdTech, techUK
Austin leads techUK’s Education and EdTech programme, shaping strategies that support the digital transformation of schools, colleges, and universities. His work focuses on strengthening the UK’s education technology ecosystem, enhancing core technology foundations, and advancing the adoption of emerging technologies to improve educational outcomes.
Austin also chairs the EdTech Advisory Panel for AI in Education, contributing to national discussions on the future of EdTech, AI, and the UK's Education system.
techUK’s Education and EdTech programmeseeks to address this challenges by bridging the gap between education, the tech industry, and policymakers. We ensure that education institutions can effectively adopt technology that enhances learning, streamlines operations, and supports skills development. Visit the programme page here
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This analysis examines what the Schools White Paper signals for the role of technology in education, highlighting infrastructure investment, data reform and AI as enablers of wider system change. It explores emerging demand across digital platforms, interoperability and inclusion, alongside structural reforms that may reshape procurement, governance and delivery expectations.
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Austin leads techUK’s Education and EdTech programme, shaping strategies that support the digital transformation of schools, colleges, and universities. His work focuses on strengthening the UK’s education technology ecosystem, enhancing core technology foundations, and advancing the adoption of emerging technologies to improve educational outcomes.
Austin also chairs the EdTech Advisory Panel for AI in Education, contributing to national discussions on the future of EdTech, AI, and the UK's Education system.
