There is a pattern that plays out in schools with some regularity. A tool gets demonstrated at a show or recommended in a staff meeting. It looks useful, the pricing seems manageable, and someone signs up. It gets used enthusiastically for a term, perhaps less so in the second, and by the third it has quietly faded from the timetable. The subscription, however, continues. Nobody asks why.

In my experience of working in EdTech for over twenty five years, this is one of the most common and least discussed patterns in technology purchasing. It is worth saying clearly: it is not usually caused by bad tools. More often, it is caused by buying something before the school has a clear answer to what problem it is actually trying to solve.

These five questions will not prevent every poor purchasing decision, but they will help you go into the process with your eyes open.

1. What specific problem are we trying to solve?

Not “how can we use technology better?” or “what are other schools using?” A specific, named problem.

If a school cannot articulate the problem in a sentence or two, the purchasing decision will be similarly vague. EdTech demonstrations are very good at creating a sense of possibility, but possibility is not the same as need. The question that most demos never ask is the one you should ask first: what, precisely, is broken, slow, or difficult right now, and is a piece of software a reasonable way to address it?

If you cannot answer that clearly before the demo, it is worth pausing rather than continuing.

2. Do we actually have that problem?

This sounds like a repeat of the first question, but it is a little different.

The EdTech market is skilled at helping schools identify problems they did not know they had, particularly when the available solution happens to address them. A persuasive demonstration can make a fairly ordinary challenge feel urgent, or suggest that current practice is more inadequate than it actually is.

It is worth separating the question of what a tool does from the question of whether that genuinely reflects something your school is struggling with. Bring in a colleague who was not at the demo and describe the problem without mentioning the tool. See if they recognise it.

3. What will change about how teachers work?

Every tool that actually sticks requires a sustained change in practice. Not a one-off training session, but a real shift in how someone does part of their job, probably week in, week out.

If there is no clear answer to what that change looks like in practice, or whether teachers have the time and capacity to make it, the tool is unlikely to survive contact with a busy spring term. This is worth discussing honestly before any commitment is made, with the people whose practice would actually need to change.

4. What does it actually cost?

The licence fee is only part of the answer.

Add setup time, training time, ongoing support, and the staff time involved in building it into existing workflows. EdTech is regularly undercosted at the point of purchase because the monthly fee looks reasonable and the hidden costs remain invisible until someone tries to implement the thing properly.

A tool that saves ten minutes of teacher time per week and requires three days of staff time to embed and maintain is not a saving. It is worth doing a realistic, fully costed estimate before committing, including what it would take to exit the contract if the tool does not work as expected.

5. What does success look like, and who will check?

This is the question that schools most consistently skip.

If nobody is responsible for evaluating whether the tool is achieving anything, nobody will notice when it gradually stops being used. A simple criterion agreed at the point of purchase, something like “in six months, this is what should look different,” together with a named person who will check on it, is worth more than any amount of usage data from the vendor’s dashboard.

The absence of an evaluation plan is not just an oversight. It is one of the main reasons subscriptions run on quietly into their third year without anyone being sure whether they are still useful.

Three Practical Steps to Move Forward

Before agreeing to any new EdTech purchase, try these three steps.

First, write the problem down before you book the demo. A single sentence describing what the tool needs to fix, agreed by more than one person. If you cannot agree on the sentence, you are not ready to buy anything.

Second, cost it properly. Add up the licence fee, the setup time, and a realistic estimate of ongoing staff time. Compare that to the estimated benefit. If the numbers do not add up comfortably, the tool needs to justify itself more clearly.

Third, set a review date and name a reviewer. Agree before purchase on a specific date six months in and a specific person who will check whether the tool is still being used and whether anything has actually changed as a result.

One More Thing

Most schools are currently paying for at least one tool that nobody is actively using. Before making any new purchasing decision, a thirty-minute audit of active subscriptions is usually time well spent. The five questions above apply equally to what you already have, not just to what you are considering next.

For more on EdTech tools that are worth the investment for primary schools, there is plenty more on this blog. And if any of this is relevant to a wider school or MAT context, details of training and consultancy are available here.