EmpowerED Startup Mini-Summit at London EdTech Week
A summit focused on the needs and opportunities of European EdTech startups
To unlock the full potential of the EdTech startup sector and position Europe as a global leader in this space, a coordinated and strategic policy approach is essential. Unlike other sectors, EdTech operates at the intersection of highly regulated national education systems, fast-moving tech innovation, and social impact imperatives.
The 4th annual Startup Mini-Summit took place on 16 June 2025 unofficially opening London EdTech Week 2025. It was organised in cooperation with techUK, UCL, AWS, the European EdTech Alliance, and EmpowerED - a three year long EU-funded project supporting the European EdTech ecosystem by informing, connecting and engaging its key stakeholders.
The event brought together more than 100 participants from across Europe, including innovators, growth-stage startups, investors, ecosystem enablers, and early-stage entrepreneurs. They shared ideas and feedback on how to improve conditions for the European EdTech startup ecosystem.
The day began with a keynote from the European EdTech Alliance, which outlined five essential ‘building blocks’ to accelerate EdTech growth in Europe. These were complemented by outputs from the EmpowerED project designed to support these foundations:
A common understanding of what “EdTech” means
Strategic governance and policy alignment
Infrastructure and skills for innovation and collaboration
Smarter funding for sustainable growth
Evidence, data, and standards for trust
These building blocks were shaped by EmpowerED research and the European EdTech Alliance Startup Ecosystem policy brief prepared in May 2025.
At the Mini-Summit, each building block was explored further through presentations and discussions, including:
A panel discussion with representatives from the Department for Education (DfE), the Ministry of Education of Flanders, and European Schoolnet (a network representing over 30 ministries of education across Europe).
A fireside chat on investing in EdTech, featuring the founder of XPRIZE and moderated by the UCL Institute of Education.
A presentation by the UCL Centre for Digital Innovation and AWS on building evidence-based, commercially sustainable, and needs-driven solutions.
Insights from the startup Graffinity on how multi-stakeholder support can accelerate startup growth.
Two presentations on EdTech evaluation and its role in fostering trust: the Chartered College of Teaching highlighted the importance of evidence and shared its work on an EdTech evaluation mechanism designed to help English education settings choose products that work for their classrooms, while EdTech Impact introduced the EdTech Impact Manager, a tool that helps multi-academy trusts and school groups assess whether their EdTech investments provide value for money.
Clarifying Challenges & Lego Building Blocks
Aligned with the experimental nature of EdTech Week events, the EmpowerED Consortium partners involved in the Mini-Summit designed a new format that enabled a participatory validation of the proposed EmpowerED roadmap actions.
Specifically, the Clarifying Challenges format was supplemented with a play-based activity where participants were invited to pick up three coloured Lego bricks to then ‘priortise’ the various roadmap actions areas.
Individual papers listed all the building blocks with the associated actions and participants had three bricks in EmpowerED branded colours to ‘vote’ on how they would prioritise the various actions – dark blue for high, cyan blue for medium and orange for low prioritisation.
This participatory format enabled attendees to engage with roadmap actions in a fun, play-based activity that was positively received – also adding a new collaborative add-on to the EmpowerED repertoire of workshops.
We’ll be sharing a more detailed post-event report soon - stay tuned!