Nordic EdTech News #131: 2025-03-24

Your Weeks 11 and 12 update from the Nordic and Baltic EdTech ecosystem

Nordic EdTech News is the best way to keep up with the EdTech ecosystem across 8 Nordic and Baltic countries. I curate it from company updates and a wide variety of international sources. It’s a passion project of mine - the rest of my time is spent advising / consulting the companies who lead the future of learning. If you’d like to find out more, drop me an email.

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Hello and welcome to today’s Nordic EdTech News.

After the news in NEN 130 that schools in Denmark and Iceland were going mobile free, the long expected announcement that Sweden would follow suit has finally been confirmed. (Link) The plans involve a national mobile phone ban for compulsory schools and after-school care centres. There will also be a legal requirement for schools to collect students' mobile phones at the beginning of the school day (Link). It has been proposed that these legal moves will apply from 1 July 2026.

As with similar moves in other countries, the decision has not been universally welcomed. The Minister of Education has been accused of being “governed by populist drives on X”, whilst Ingrid Forsler, associate professor of media and communication studies at Södertörn University. has powerfully argued that “to continue to pretend that digitalization….is something that can be locked away in a mobile box is to leave teachers and school leaders in the lurch.”

Jannie Jeppesen, CEO of the Swedish Edtech Industry, goes further highlighting how moves back to analogue tools impact on children’s digital literacy skills stating: “This is not about technology for technology's sake. It's about building a resilient society where citizens can understand, analyse and question the digital information they encounter.”

One final story from Sweden where the backlash from Skolverket’s failure to deliver a new digital test platform continues to rise. They have now received sharp criticism from the country’s tech elite (Link).

Elsewhere, Denmark’s multinational Egmont Group reported its 2024 numbers showing a 21% increase in operating profit to DKK 761 million on sales of DKK 17 billion (Link). Most relevantly, Egmont Books, which consists of the Norwegian publisher Cappelen Damm and the Danish publisher Lindhardt og Ringhof, showed a yoy increase on sales to DKK 1,642 (1,615) million, although there was a small drop in adjusted operating profit to DKK 102 (116) million. Note: these numbers are for the whole publishers - I can see no breakdown in their reporting for the education businesses, although this report states that Cappelen Damm “managed a double-digit percentage growth in digital last year…in education.”

I wonder how much of this is being fueled by teachers using their own money to buy resources. A new Finnish report highlights their important contribution with one teacher spending €300 a year on materials for his class.

I’m sure that these topics (and many others) will make for interesting discussions when the Nordic EdTech community gathers at the Nordic EdTech Summit in Malmö this September. I’m thrilled to announce the next 10 confirmed speakers below (there’s more to come!) and the draft programme for the event is now available on the event website.

If you were waiting to see the programme before booking your spot, now is the perfect time to sign up! You can get a SEK 1,000 discount on your ticket by using the promo code EarlyMarch at checkout before the end of this month.

If you’ve got a story that you’d like me to include in a future issue of this newsletter, please email hello@10digits.org, tag me on X or LinkedIn or use #nordicedtech / #balticedtech.

Thanks for reading, Jonathan

News from Denmark

• Copenhagen adopts a mobile phone ban in primary schools for grades 0-3, unless “it serves an educational purpose.” (Link)

• “At Mariagerfjord Gymnasium, virtual teaching is here to stay.”

• 18 municipalities have applied to participate in a trial of online education for students refusing to go to school. (Link)

• Hackers are targeting vulnerable, publicly available applications to launch cyber attacks on education institutions. (Link)

• Shape Robotics has launched the first STEAM Centre in Latvia (Link) as their CEO works to address continued shareholder concern (Link).

• Systime has developed AI-powered interactive activities for high school students, which aim to enhance learning rather than replace their own thinking. (Link)

• Zensai launched a new AI-powered Human Success Score - a key predictor of how “teams are doing today and will do in the future.” (Link)

News from Estonia

• The team behind the Algae Bob Digital escape room made it to the final of DigiEduHack. (Link)

News from Finland

• How 3DBear’s immersive spaces are “redefining training at Østfold University College.” (Link)

• Code School Finland has started to deliver AI training to local businesses and entrepreneurs. (Link)

• How Kwizie supports job seekers to improve their workplace skills and digital literacy. (Link)

• Psyon Games is developing a mobile game that aims to raise awareness about the human papillomavirus, or HPV. (Link)

• See the Good! continues to expand in the US. (Link)

• Working with the TEKLA EdTech testbed has helped Vegemi to grow and scale. (Link)

News from Iceland

• How Bara tala is helping immigrants learn Icelandic. (Link)

• Detailed overview of how Evolytes is breaking maths barriers from Iris Gisladottir, their Co-founder. (Link)

News from Latvia

• Nearly €9 million in new money has been found to provide teaching aids in schools. Some of which has been diverted from other projects. (Link)

• Staff and students at Latvian universities lack the digital skills to take advantage of AI tools and technologies. (Link)

News from Lithuania

• The Ministry of Education is forming a working group to develop national rules for the use of mobile phones in schools. (Link)

• Congratulations to Monika Katkute, founder of Vedliai, who was recognised as Education Leader of the Year at a recent ceremony. (Link)

• VILNIUS TECH received €669,000 from Google.org to help build Lithuania’s cybersecurity workforce. (Link)

News from Norway

• Education institutions should invest in teaching students how to use AI in a responsible and appropriate way and allow the use of AI in more exams. (Link)

• Teachers in Bærum have been praised for their use of iPads. (Link)

• Resources from 3DLearning are now being used by students in Poland. (Link)

• The International Certification of Evidence in EdTech announced that it has secured initial funding from Innovation Norway. (Link)

• No Isolation is now working with 10,000+ students across Europe and beyond to “bring learning and belonging to every child.” (Link)

News from Sweden

• Two interesting but IMHO flawed provocations: “Keep AI entrepreneurs far away from Swedish schools” and “Sweden's EdTech market is broken.”

• New research shows that physical and digital materials can create different learning opportunities. (Link)

• ILT Education has rebranded its Giglets Education business as ILT Education UK. (Link)

• Imagi has revamped its Creative Coding in Python curriculum to make Computer Science more engaging, accessible, and meaningful for students. (Link)

• LingoLooper has closed a new funding round to “create the #1 language learning app that gets you from basic to fluent in record time.” (Link)

• "60 hours a week is the sweet spot" for working at Sana according to a leaked letter, which has not gone down well with Swedish unions. (Link)

• Skolon published their annual and sustainability reports for 2024, which CEO Oliver Lundgren discusses here.

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