Technology is being put in front of children faster than anyone is checking whether it's safe.

The edtech market has learned to manufacture badges, scores and "impact" ratings far faster than it can produce evidence. Most of those signals measure things that cannot be measured reliably, and verify things no one has actually inspected. We don't play that game. The questions that matter are the ones that can be answered: Is this product lawful? Is it safe for an individual child? Is it secure? Those questions have evidence behind them - or they don't. EDDS exists to ask them in public, and to hold the market to its answers.

EDDS Institute is an independent research and advocacy body. We exist to make one rule normal: no technology reaches a classroom until it is proven lawful, safe and secure — before children use it, not after something goes wrong.

We bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, researchers, educators, engineers and privacy advocates dedicated to protecting the sovereignty of education systems as they become increasingly dependent on Artificial Intelligence (AI): digital, data-intensive and algorithmic systems.

We work with enlightened educators, education authorities and ethical education technology providers to pilot and put in place systems of education technology (edtech) evaluation and certification.

Independent research. We investigate how edtech is procured, governed and evidenced — from data-protection practice in the fine print, to the governance gaps in the certification market itself. Our work is published, peer-reviewed and openly available.

Policy and advocacy. We bring this evidence to the people who can act on it — educators, education authorities, parliamentarians and international bodies — and argue for meaningful governance of the digitisation of education and for children's right to a safe, high-quality education. [ Link: Policy &

Standards and method. Our advocacy isn't only words. We helped develop and now audit against the Global Education Security Standard (GESS) with the Access 4 Learning Community — turning principles into something a product can actually be tested against.

Stay tuned, more is coming!

Independence: We keep our walls up

EDDS does two things: an Institute that researches and advocates, and an audit service that assesses products commercially against a recognised standard. They share a mission — not a set of conclusions. The Institute takes no fee from the vendors it writes about. The audit service certifies no product the Institute has been paid to praise. We built that wall deliberately, because a certifier that also authors its own evidence is precisely the failure our research spends its time documenting.

The challenge

An experiment in social selection is running in classrooms all over the world — and no government is leading it. It is underway quietly, in nurseries, primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities. Largely unregulated, the world's edtech providers have entered our education systems. They are amassing children's data, processing it, packaging it and, in too many cases, monetising it — without the knowledge, consent or awareness of the teachers, parents and children it belongs to.

A child's future can now be shaped by algorithms that sort educational populations by socioeconomic group, typing speed, attention span, friendship networks and countless other meta-tagged data points — signals that may, years later, feed into whether they are offered a job, a place, or a loan. This is not a distant risk. The foundations are being laid today.

Meanwhile, the systems meant to reassure schools have become part of the problem. A growing industry of certifications, trustmarks and curated listings promises to tell buyers what is "safe" and "effective." But our research shows these signals are mostly produced from documents the vendor supplies, interpreted by reviewers, and converted into a tradable badge — under conditions of weak independent verification and almost no enforcement. The result is institutional confidence that runs well ahead of anything actually checked. Trust signals, not trustworthiness.

In medicine, aviation and engineering, this would be unthinkable: there, certification comes with licensing, inspection, public registers and real consequences. Edtech has none of it. EDDS exists to close that gap — through research that names the problem, advocacy that demands better, and an audit service that does the inspection the badges skip.

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Our manifesto

for education

and technology

Key principles for a healthy, vibrant and inclusive edtech sector that acts for the best outcomes for children and students

Digital Technologies for Children’s Good and Education (edtech) should, at the most fundamental level, observe children’s rights and freedoms and promote quality and diversity; benefit children by providing opportunities for their participation and agency; support sustainability and protect the independent and sacred nature of children’s ecosystems; and support their physical, social and emotional development as healthy, independent and resilient adults who can develop original thought, personhood and apply knowledge.

We call for the existence and safeguarding of Education Technologies for Children’s Good and Education based on the following five key principles for good edtech

Principle 1

Edtech’s primary purpose should be to enhance learning and improve educational outcomes. Edtech should only be deployed in the classroom if there is proven case for its enhancing role – the classroom should not be a testing ground for unproven products.

Principle 2

Edtech should, at a minimum, be tested and certified to abide by all legal, social, pedagogic, ethical and organisational norms, laws, regulations and standards. Without this proof, no edtech should be deployed in the classroom.

Principle 3

Edtech has a societal responsibility to children, it should therefore be held to higher ethical standards of trust, privacy and security of children than other technology products.

Principle 4

Edtech should be held accountable through transparency of its algorithmic and data processing. Children should be excluded from data collection where it is not needed for the immediate task and be allowed safe digital spaces to allow error and exploration without record.