The rapid expansion of digital platforms and, more recently, generative artificial intelligence has multiplied the options available to schools, teachers, and education authorities. Every week, new tools appear claiming to personalize learning, reduce teachers’ administrative workload, or improve academic outcomes. Yet as the number of available solutions grows, so too does the difficulty of distinguishing technologies that provide genuine educational value from those driven more by technological enthusiasm than by evidence.
Against this backdrop, the EdTech for Good Framework 2.0 was developed by UNICEF and enriched through contributions from more than 140 organizations across over 60 countries. Rather than serving as a ranking of tools or a certification system, the framework offers a common language for evaluating educational technologies from a broader perspective—one that incorporates issues such as safety, inclusion, transparency, pedagogical quality, and the readiness of the contexts in which these technologies will be used.
The result is a shift in perspective. Instead of asking the traditional question, Does this tool work?, UNICEF encourages us to ask a number of equally important questions. According to this new framework, these are the five questions every educational technology should be able to answer before entering a classroom.
Is It Safe for Those Who Use It?
Until recently, the first question about an educational technology was usually whether it helped students learn more or learn better. The EdTech for Good Framework 2.0, however, proposes reversing that order of priorities. Before assessing its educational impact, it argues that we must first ask whether the tool can be used safely by those who will interact with it, especially children and adolescents.
Safety extends far beyond cybersecurity or compliance with data protection regulations. It includes students’ well-being, the existence of mechanisms to prevent harm, transparency regarding how AI systems operate, the management of inappropriate content, and the organization’s capacity to identify and respond to potential risks.
The Framework also pays particular attention to tools that process children’s data, use AI to generate recommendations, or provide automated assessment and feedback, considering that these require a higher level of scrutiny.
This approach reflects an idea that is becoming increasingly prominent in educational debates: a tool may be technically brilliant and may even demonstrate positive effects on learning, but that alone is not enough to justify its place in the classroom. If it fails to protect students’ rights, does not provide sufficient guarantees about how it works, or introduces risks that are difficult to control, its educational value is inevitably compromised. Innovation, the Framework suggests, can only be considered genuine progress when it is also safe and responsible.
Does It Really Improve Learning?
Promising better outcomes is relatively easy. Demonstrating that a technology effectively contributes to learning is far more complex. The Framework reminds us that many tools enter the market accompanied by claims about their ability to personalize instruction, increase student motivation, or improve academic performance. Yet these claims are not always supported by sufficient evidence. For this reason, one of the Framework’s fundamental principles is that educational claims should be substantiated by data, research, or implementation experience appropriate to the product’s stage of development.
This does not mean that every solution must present large-scale experimental trials or independent studies from its earliest stages. The Framework recognizes that a start-up cannot be expected to provide the same volume of evidence as a well-established organization. Instead, it introduces a principle of proportionality: the greater the reach of a tool, the larger its user base, or the higher the risks associated with its use, the stronger the evidence supporting its benefits should be. Innovation is not exempt from demonstrating its value; it is simply evaluated according to its level of maturity.
But the Framework goes even further. It does not ask only whether a technology works, but also for whom, in what context, and under what conditions it works. A tool may produce positive results in one education system while failing to achieve the same outcomes in another with different infrastructure, curricula, or student populations. Evaluating impact therefore means asking what evidence exists, what that evidence actually demonstrates, and to what extent the findings can be transferred to other settings. This more demanding perspective—less willing to accept innovation claims at face value—is one of the cornerstones of UNICEF’s new framework.
En ese contexto nace el EdTech for Good Framework 2.0, desarrollado por UNICEF, y enriquecido con las aportaciones de más de 140 organizaciones de más de 60 países. Más que una clasificación de herramientas o un sistema de certificación, el marco propone un lenguaje común para evaluar tecnologías educativas desde una perspectiva más amplia, que incorpora aspectos como la seguridad, la inclusión, la transparencia, la calidad pedagógica o la preparación de los contextos donde van a utilizarse.
El resultado es un cambio de enfoque. Frente a la pregunta tradicional, ¿funciona esta herramienta?, UNICEF nos invita a plantear otras cuestiones igual de relevantes. Estas son las cinco preguntas que, según este nuevo marco, toda tecnología educativa debería ser capaz de responder antes de entrar en un aula.
The framework offers a common language for evaluating educational technologies from a broader perspective—one that incorporates issues such as safety, inclusion, transparency, pedagogical quality, and the readiness of the contexts in which these technologies will be used.
Is It Designed Around How People Learn?
An educational technology may be intuitive, incorporate artificial intelligence, or offer dozens of features. Yet none of these characteristics, on their own, guarantees that it will improve teaching and learning. The EdTech for Good Framework 2.0 places pedagogy at the center of the evaluation process and asks a fundamental question: Was the tool designed around clear educational objectives, or primarily around what the technology makes possible?
To answer this question, the Framework examines issues that go far beyond interface design or user experience. It considers whether the tool is grounded in sound principles of how people learn, whether it supports effective teaching methods, whether it provides age-appropriate learning experiences, and whether it equips teachers with the resources they need to integrate the technology meaningfully into their practice.
The Framework also examines whether AI-powered features are understandable and aligned with a clearly defined educational purpose, rather than being included simply because they are novel. At its core, the Framework revives an idea that is often overshadowed by technological enthusiasm: the quality of a tool does not depend on the number of features it offers, but on how effectively it helps people teach and learn. The most valuable platforms are not necessarily the most sophisticated, but those whose design responds to specific educational needs and helps teachers and students achieve learning goals that would otherwise be more difficult to attain.
Will It Work in the Context Where It Is Intended to Be Used?
One of the most common mistakes when evaluating an educational technology is assuming that a tool that has produced good results in one setting will perform equally well everywhere else. The Framework challenges this assumption by placing context at the heart of the evaluation process. Before assessing the potential of any solution, it encourages us to ask whether it is capable of responding to the real conditions of the environment in which it will be implemented.
The answer depends on multiple factors. A platform may require a level of internet connectivity that many schools simply do not have, rely on devices that are unavailable, or be built around teaching approaches that are difficult to transfer to education systems with different curricular priorities. Other considerations include language, accessibility, teacher training, the availability of technical support, and the existence of resources to support implementation.
The Framework considers all of these elements to be integral to the quality of a tool rather than secondary concerns. This perspective is particularly relevant at a time when many digital solutions—and especially those based on artificial intelligence—are designed with global deployment in mind. The same product may be used in very different educational settings, but that does not mean it will meet the needs of all of them equally well.
For this reason, UNICEF advocates for a context-sensitive evaluation, capable of distinguishing between a tool that is technically sound and one that is genuinely appropriate for a particular education system.
Who Is Behind the Tool?
One of the features that most clearly distinguishes the EdTech for Good Framework 2.0 from other evaluation models is that it does not focus exclusively on the product itself. It also directs attention to the organization behind it. What is its mission? Who funds it? What experience does it have in education? How are decisions made? What governance and accountability mechanisms are in place? According to UNICEF, answering these questions is just as important as understanding the tool’s features.
The objective is not to question whether educational technologies are developed by public or private organizations, but rather to bring greater transparency to an increasingly complex ecosystem. Many of the platforms entering classrooms today incorporate artificial intelligence, process large volumes of data, or evolve through continuous updates. Understanding who is behind these developments, what their priorities are, and how they address issues such as ethics, privacy, and potential conflicts of interest helps users assess the claims made about the product more critically.
Until now, the evaluation of educational technology has focused almost exclusively on the characteristics of the tools themselves. UNICEF proposes broadening that perspective by recognizing that trust also depends on the organizations that design and maintain them. At a time when decisions made by technology companies can directly influence the learning experiences of millions of students, understanding the organization responsible for a product becomes an essential component of any rigorous evaluation.
A New Way of Evaluating Educational Technology
The five questions posed by the EdTech for Good Framework 2.0 reflect a profound shift in the way educational technology is understood. Until now, evaluation has largely focused on outcomes: whether a platform improved grades, increased motivation, or made some aspect of teaching more efficient. Without abandoning those considerations, the new Framework broadens the perspective to include other issues that are now equally important: safety, pedagogical quality, adaptability to different contexts, inclusion, and the transparency of the organizations developing these tools.
At a time when artificial intelligence is rapidly expanding throughout education, having a shared set of criteria for evaluating educational technologies is becoming increasingly necessary. The Framework helps us ask better questions and reminds us that introducing a tool into a classroom involves far more than adopting a technological innovation. It is an educational decision, with implications for learning, children’s rights, and the functioning of education systems. And that decision, UNICEF argues, deserves an evaluation as rigorous as the one we would expect for any other education policy.
