EduGrowth has teamed up with Global Victoria on the initiative and lobbied governments around Australia to support the Global Victoria edtech Innovation Alliance Program.

The scheme will support edtech companies, educational institutions and international organisations in partnerships, so as to test the efficacy of edtech solutions in the state and beyond.

The Victorian government has allocated almost AUS$800,000 to the project as part of the country’s $33 million International Education Short Term Recovery Strategy.

In the announcement for the program, Global Victoria and EduGrowth said education “now has the need and appetite for edtech innovation and transformation”.

The partnership has called the research project a “fantastic opportunity” for the edtech sector in the state, which could then be replicated across Australia, supporting edtech ecosystems across the country.

EduGrowth has named test bed activation, which is a platform for conducting testing of computational tools among other technologies, as a way to drive a “new wave of education” out of the country.

“This is such an innovative project,” said Beverly Oliver, a member of the EduGrowth board.

“We have the opportunity for edtech partners to have six months support to embed their edtech solution with a Victorian education partner and get underpinning research to document the learner efficacy.”

“This is such an innovative project”

EduGrowth and Global Victoria want to establish the state as Australia’s “education innovation hub”, and the partnership wants to go on to see Australian education impact learners across the globe – with “quality products reimagined in a digital world”.

The program seeks to incorporate all the virtues of the “triple helix innovation model” – joining industry, government and academia together.

The goal is to extend the model to include the “efficacy and showcasing” of innovation in the country’s education sector, which they say is an “absolute prerequisite to large-scale innovation”.

Grant applications for the Global Victoria edtech Innovation Alliance Program close on October 18, 2021.