ETIH Innovation Hub: Best Digital Learning Platform for Schools shortlist highlights AI, data, and impact

A closer look at the platforms shortlisted for this year’s award, where engagement, data, and outcomes sit at the center of digital learning.

As part of our ETIH Innovation Awards 2026 category spotlight series, we are taking a closer look at the shortlisted entries across this year’s program. In its first year, the awards received over 140 entries, reflecting both the scale and pace of change across EdTech.

The shortlist highlights a wide range of approaches to teaching, learning, and skills development, with winners set to be announced on May 11.

Where digital platforms are delivering in schools

The Best Digital Learning Platform for Schools category focuses on platforms delivering structured, engaging, and measurable learning experiences in school settings. This includes solutions supporting curriculum delivery, assessment, and independent or blended study across a range of subjects.

Judges are looking for platforms that combine intuitive design with strong content and clear evidence of impact. This includes how effectively a platform supports engagement, how it uses data or AI to inform learning, and whether it demonstrates measurable improvements in outcomes or user experience.

The category reflects a broader shift in the sector. Schools are moving beyond static content delivery toward platforms that integrate assessment, analytics, and personalization into everyday teaching. The expectation is no longer access alone, but evidence that the technology changes how students learn and how teachers respond.

Finalists

Code Along (Black Girls Code)

Code Along is a free, video-based coding academy created by Beyond Code Collective, Black Girls Code, and GoldieBlox. It introduces learners to coding through structured tutorials, role models, and project-based challenges.

Each episode of Code Along focuses on building practical applications while explaining key concepts and best practices. The program has reached millions of learners, with over 160,000 subscribers, and 165,000 hours of lessons watched and counting.

Efekta

Efekta's groundbreaking AI-powered learning platform and learning companion, Addi, was launched to 4 million students and teachers across Latin America, the world's largest AI learning deployment to date.

Built on the largest English language learning dataset, the platform combines cutting-edge AI with proprietary curricula and decades of pedagogical expertise, supporting both teachers and students at scale.

Addi helps students practice while detecting what they excel at, struggle with, and how they learn best by providing contextual and personalized instruction. It automates routine tasks for teachers, enabling them to focus class time on engagement and motivation.

Explore Learning (Compass)

Compass is Explore Learning’s digital learning platform, designed to deliver personalised learning through the combination of intelligent technology and expert tutoring.

Supporting over 50,000 children each year across 95 learning centres and online, Compass uses an enhanced aptitude model built on more than half a billion learning interactions to adapt pathways to each child’s understanding, pace and progression. Faster assessment, real-time learning insights and on-demand progress visibility create a responsive and engaging experience for learners, tutors and families.

This integrated approach enables earlier intervention, sustained engagement and measurable progress, ensuring a cohesive system rather than a standalone digital tool.

Google Research (AI Quests, with Stanford Accelerator for Learning)

AI Quests is a game-based learning experience developed by Google Research and the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. Designed for middle schoolers (ages 11–14), it transforms complex AI concepts into interactive, code-free quests inspired by real-world research, from predicting floods to mapping the human brain.

This initiative promotes active learning, equipping students with the literacy needed to responsibly build AI applications that address future societal challenges. Having already reached 200,000 students globally, we are now scaling to reach 2 million learners by 2026, preparing the next generation of informed digital citizens.

Learning by Questions (LbQ)

Learning by Questions (LbQ) empowers teachers to deliver evidence-informed, high-impact teaching every day. It combines adaptive learning, scaffolded mastery, retrieval practice, and real-time diagnostics into a single intuitive platform. Teachers gain instant insight into pupil progress and misconceptions, enabling targeted interventions without increasing workload.

Over 1500 UK schools have adopted LbQ, with a 100 percent renewal rate for its flagship product Wayfinder. Teachers report reduced workload (100 percent), improved wellbeing (92 percent), and better pupil outcomes (98 percent).

By integrating assessment, data, and analytics into teaching, LbQ translates research-backed pedagogy into practical, everyday classroom impact, as supported by the Changing Learning, Changing Lives PedTech report (LEO Academy Trust/ Aubrey-Smith, 2023).

Learnetic (EdTool)

EdTool is an AI-supported, all-in-one learning platform that helps schools and teachers with lesson creation, content delivery, assessment, and studens’ progress monitoring in one environment.

Built by Learnetic on 20+ years of expertise across 350+ projects in 50+ countries, it enables teachers to create interactive lessons and tests from prompts, PDFs, or textbook photos, use 50,000+ ready-to-use STEM and SEN resources, assign, and analyse results in real time.

As a web-based platform, EdTool works across devices without additional infrastructure. Multilingual support, WCAG-ready templates, and scalable school deployment make it a practical platform for modern digital, interactive learning experiences.

Medly AI

Medly is an AI-powered digital learning platform with three products: Medly Exams (secondary exam preparation across GCSEs, A-Levels, IGCSEs, IB, AP, SAT), Medly Open (university learning with AI assistant and document management), and a Teacher Dashboard (AI-powered analytics for educators).

It delivers personalised learning through AI marking, Socratic tutoring, structured lessons, handwriting recognition, and full-length mock exams. With 300,000 signups and 74.1% of 2025 GCSE students improving by at least one grade, Medly achieves both exceptional engagement and measurable academic outcomes.

SMART Technologies (Lumio)

Lumio is an interactive online learning platform trusted by over 1.3 million teachers worldwide. Powered by SMART Technologies' 35 years of education innovation, it brings together lesson delivery, collaboration, formative assessment, and personalised learning in one place, so teachers can spend less time planning and more time with their students.

From ready-made resources and AI-assisted lesson creation to real-time feedback and inclusive design, Lumio gives educators everything they need to engage every student on any device. Schools and districts choose Lumio because it simplifies the teaching experience without compromising depth, and delivers measurable impact on student engagement and outcomes.

Venture Valley

Venture Valley is a free, game-based learning platform from the nonprofit Money Confidence Project that teaches financial literacy and entrepreneurship through interactive simulations and competitions. Designed for high school and college students, it meets young people where they are on mobile devices and in entertainment-driven environments, turning complex concepts into engaging, relatable experiences.

Players run virtual businesses, make real-time financial decisions, and compete in multiplayer tournaments that drive engagement and repeat learning. Through gameplay, students build confidence, develop practical skills, and begin to see entrepreneurship as a realistic, achievable path, all within a scalable, easy-to-implement digital platform.

Explore the full shortlist

You can view the full ETIH Innovation Awards 2026 shortlist featuring all categories and finalists across this year’s program. Winners will be announced on May 11.