The Covid-19 pandemic reshaped our world. Schools were closed around the world, leading to 1.6 billion children and their teachers moving to remote education. Governments and other education providers were forced to respond quickly, and experiment about how best to reach all children.

To support and empower policy makers by giving them the evidence they need to make decisions about technology in education, we opened a funding window for small-scale (up to £50k), short-term research into the use of EdTech in the Covid-19 response.

In November 2020, 175 applicants responded to our call for small-scale, short-term research grants to build an evidence-base on EdTech used in response to Covid-19 – with reference to government priority areas – in our countries of work. Ten projects were selected and throughout 2021 have carried out primary research on topics including radio-based learning with girls in rural Kenya, remote teacher training and data systems in Sierra Leone, tech use to increase participation in Pakistan, and the use of text-message nudges to influence caregiver behaviour in Ghana. These studies were commissioned prior to identifying our themes but nevertheless are well aligned. EdTech Hub Covid-19 research partners were chosen for their focus on outstanding EdTech evidence gaps and government priority areas in the respective countries.

Findings are already being used by governments in their ongoing response to Covid-19.