The adoption of digital technologies in education has accelerated rapidly in recent times, driven by technological progress and catalyzed by the global COVID-19 pandemic. This article analyzes the present landscape and future prospects for Educational Technology (EdTech) in Ukraine. Eficiency analyses using Data Envelopment Analysis methodology reveal substantial opportunities for Ukraine to enhance educational outcomes via increased investment and technology integration. Ukraine's EdTech startup ecosystem has expanded to over 80 companies delivering solutions spanning tutoring, language instruction, MOOCs, K-12 education, STEM fields, robotics, learning management platforms, and more. However, a strategic assessment indicates the ecosystem currently faces more challenges and risks relative to advantages and possibilities. Major obstacles include high financial costs, regulatory impediments, underdeveloped technical infrastructure, resistance to change among educators, and limited data on the impact of EdTech. For Ukraine to fully realize the potential of EdTech, concerted eforts are needed to boost public and private investment, fast-track digitalization initiatives, foster an enabling environment for EdTech enterprises, and develop educators' capacity to efectively incorporate technology. With focused strategic interventions, EdTech can serve as a key engine for expanding access, elevating quality and driving eficiency gains in Ukraine's education system.
Innovation in technology is swiftly reshaping all facets of society, and the education sector is no
exception. However, the speed of digitalization in education has traditionally trailed other industries
due to elevated costs, sophisticated functionality of solutions, and inertia in evolving pedagogical
methods [
In Ukraine, the EdTech sector was already expanding before the pandemic but has since experienced a boom. By 2020, the Ukrainian EdTech ecosystem encompassed over 80 startups ofering products and services targeting learners across age groups. This paper aims to evaluate the existing landscape and future outlook for EdTech in Ukraine, exploring key trends, prominent companies, opportunities and challenges.
The evaluation of the efectiveness of education in Europe and Central Asia by the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method, where the input – Expenditure on education, output – GDP per capita (figure 1).
The results of the analysis showed that efective education (eficiency coeficient equal 1) in Greece, Italy, Ireland, and Switzerland. Norway, France, Austria, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, and Iceland Eficiencies range 0.7 ≤ < 0.8 0.8 ≤ < 0.9 0.9 ≤ < 1 = 1 5 10 8 21 are close to the eficiency curve. That is, European countries, in general, have experience in the efective expenditure on education. As for Ukraine, the expenditure on education is extremely ineficient, a similar situation in Georgia, the Russian Federation, and Moldova (ie in the countries of the former USSR).
Employee education is the key to a company’s success. That is why companies try to get highly educated employees and maintain their qualifications at a high level. To assess the efectiveness of education in Europe and Central Asia, built a model of DEA, where inputs – GDP per capita, Internet users (per 100 people), Expenditure on education as (% School-age population, output – Labor force with advanced education (% of the total labor force). The simulation results are shown in the table 1.
DEA model analyzing eficiencies by VRS technology and input orientated eficiency. A number of countries with eficiency equal 1 are 21 out of 44, mean eficiency: 0.922.
The results show that eficiency is lower in those countries that incur significant expenditures on education. Conversely, countries with low spending on education have shown high eficiency. For example, Ukraine has an eficiency of 1, Labor force with advanced education – 72.15, GDP per capita – 3095.17, Internet users (per 100 people) – 89.74, Expenditure on education – 13.05, School-age population – 3.9 million. Germany, the eficiency of which is 0.72, has Labor force with advanced education – 73.56, GDP per capita – 47603, Internet users (per 100 people) – 71.13, Expenditure on education – 11.04, School-age population – 2.5 mln.
Analysis of education eficiency in diferent countries has shown that there is great potential for productivity increases. Therefore, the implementation of innovations in education is promising.
Holon IQ is an international analytical agency founded in 2018 [
Globally, most major markets have followed a similar trajectory with steady climbs into the pandemic, followed by 2-3 year surges in investment before falling back to investment levels not seen for around 7 years in Europe, 10 years for the US and nearly 15 years in China.
HolonIQ listed the 200 best EdTech companies in Europe, where 11 projects from Ukraine are included. The rating is based in: • companies market positions; • demand and quality of products; • financial stability; • attractiveness for investment; • development progress and dynamics; • project team.
Ukrainian EdTech projects listed in the HolonIQ rating: • Basenji Apps – applications for English learning; • EnglishDom – online school of English learning; • Enguide – service for choosing English courses in Kyiv; • Speechyard – service for learning English by movies; • Besmart – preparation courses for final exams at school; • SkillUp – training courses for IT specialists; • Skyworker – service for finding IT vacancies; • Jooble – job search service; • Parta – educational portal; • Studway – media about education; • Vseosvita – service for continuing education.
As we can see, the most popular are services for learning English. But there are nearly 80 digital education projects in the Ukrainian EdTech landscape. EdTech Landscape map of Ukraine for 2020 (figure 3) was proposed by Vadym Synzheretskyi (CEO and co-founder of BUKI online platform for tutors).
Synzheretskyi [
Preply [
EnglishDom [10] is an online English school and at the same time an IT company that inspires to learn English through technology. The company is one of the leaders in the field of EdTech in Eastern Europe. The EnglishDom platform includes 5 innovative services for learning English, including mobile applications and an interactive digital textbook. The service unites more than 500 English teachers and 50,000 users.
Prometheus [11] is a mass online courses platform called “Ukrainian Coursera”. The main goal of the project is to provide free online access to university-level courses to anyone, as well as to provide opportunities to publish and distribute such courses to leading professors, universities, and companies. Upon completion of the course, the student receives a certificate signed by the best teachers of Ukrainian universities. Today the platform has more than 300 thousand active users. Prometheus has organized its free online in-service training courses for educators in accordance with the requirements of the Procedure for in-service training of pedagogical and research and teaching staf. Prometheus online course certificates for educators can be oficially credited as advanced training.
EdPro [12] is one of the few Edtech solutions for school education. This interactive panel can replace several objects in the classroom at once – a blackboard, a projector, an interactive screen, and a computer. In such panels, teachers can show students presentations, videos, graphics, or images during lessons. Instead, students can solve learning tasks, count, or edit texts right away. Along with the board, they also developed an interactive software solution for education with illustrations and can take great advice to improve their work, and parents - to improve the well-being or performance of their children.
The educational project Na Urok [14] aims to objectively cover the modern educational process and bring it to a qualitatively new level. This became possible due to the implementation of versatile and thorough work: writing informative articles related to school and extracurricular life; conducting thematic webinars; introduction of various educational competitions; attracting the best developments in school subjects from teachers from all over Ukraine. The project aims to help teachers feel their own significance because each teacher in the project will be able to publish their own professional achievements or use the work of colleagues. The project is set up to work closely with educators who want to share their experiences on the Internet. The Na Urok team makes a significant efort to ensure that teachers, parents, and students can find the maximum amount of useful theoretical and practical materials for the school on the portal.
The eTutorium [15] project aims to organize distance learning through the implementation of efective IT solutions. The project arose in 2008 from attempts to create their own webinar platform to conduct online events. After analyzing the needs of the eLearning market, in 2010 the team moved on to developing solutions for online tutors. Today, the platform hosts between 3,200 and 5,000 webinars per month. In 2015, we launched the eTutorium project, combining an updated platform for eTutorium Webinars and eTutor Academy – the Academy of Tutors, where we share our experience and knowledge in the field of online learning. In 2019, they created eTutorium LMS – a system of distance learning, with which you can not only collect courses but also fully organize the learning process online.
Mate academy [16] is an online platform for learning programming and finding your first job in IT.
Disadvantages Communication local or Skype. Absents of mobile applications.
Lack of ofline support.
The audience is limited to Ukrainian-speaking users.
High cost of the product Lack of mobile application No mobile application.
A small audience of parents and students.
Having strong competitors with free solutions.
Risks of non-payment for training.
English spelling only. The training lasts 4-5 months and takes place online. Now in the portfolio of Mate academy courses includes Java, Front-end, Full Stack Web, UI / UX Design. The peculiarity of the platform is that students pay for their studies only in case of employment, giving a percentage of the new salary. During the existence of Mate academy, more than 200 students got jobs. In 2020 the company was planning to open a business in new markets; They looked at the country, where there is a great demand for engineers and the road, for no worse than the knowledge. The aim of the company in 2022 there were a number of thousands of engineers in Ukraine and the English regions – for example, Great Britain and India.
Grammarly [17] is one of the most famous Ukrainian startups. This is a service for checking written texts. It helps to correct grammatical and stylistic errors. A free version is available, as well as Premium, which expands access to additional features. The company’s head ofice is now located in Silicon Valley, and the service was founded by three Ukrainians. In 2019, it became known that the total amount of investment in Grammarly is about $ 200 million (5 billion hryvnias). This funding has raised the company’s total value to more than $ 1 billion. So from now on the Ukrainian startup can be oficially called a “unicorn”. Grammarly services are now used by millions of regular users around the world. We are talking only about English-speaking users, the developers do not plan to expand the number of languages for testing yet. As of 2020, 30 million people use Grammarly services every day.
The key task of education in modern conditions is to change, adapt to new conditions, and develop. The analog world is becoming increasingly fragile, and the digital world is becoming antifragile. COVID-19 not only posed threats to agriculture but also opened up new opportunities, in particular in digitalization and the introduction of innovative technologies. In our opinion, education in Ukraine needs the introduction of a significant number of EdTech, which will accelerate the development of education and increase its eficiency. SWOT analysis of the EdTech startup ecosystem is presented in table 3. Education is a big area with a lot of students and pupils, which can demand many EdTech projects.
The application of EdTech produces a lot of data that can be used for agriculture development.
EdTech can significantly reduce the need for teachers and administrated staf.
If the EdTech is not reliable enough and accessible to attackers, the danger may arise for education.
The probability of diferent EdTech results in diferent conditions.
Access to data can increase inequalities, impede competition, and create economic barriers.
Nowadays education needs to improve and increase eficiency. EdTech can become exactly the direction that will promote the active development of education, increase its accessibility and improve its quality. Analysis of the efectiveness of education has shown that the countries of Europe and Central Asia have significant potential for the development of education.
The EdTech startup ecosystem is characterized by more weaknesses and threats than strengths and opportunities. Ukrainian education has significant potential for increasing eficiency and development. To ensure the realization of this potential, it is necessary to do the following: • increase government spending on education, in particular on the development of innovative technologies; • ensure access of EdTech to financing; • accelerate the process of digitalization of education, in particular, to promote the spread of afordable ICT and introduce e-government; • increase the interest of non-governmental organizations in the introduction of innovative technologies in education; • create favorable conditions for the development of EdTech ecosystems.
Further development of the EdTech startup ecosystem can be a key solution for the development not only in Ukraine but also around the world. [10] Anhliiska po Skaipu - navchannia anhliiskii movi po Skype v EnglishDom, 2021. URL: https: //www.englishdom.com/. [11] Prometheus – Naikrashchi onlain-kursy Ukrainy ta svitu, 2021. URL: https://prometheus.org.ua/. [12] Interaktyvna panel EdPro, 2021. URL: https://edpro.ua/. [13] Osvitoria, 2021. URL: https://osvitoria.org/en. [14] Osvitnii proekt “Na Urok” dlia vchyteliv, 2021. URL: https://naurok.com.ua/. [15] Platforma eTutorium Webinar — maidanchyk dlia provedennia vebinariv ta treninhiv, 2021. URL: https://etutorium.com.ua/. [16] Kursy Prohramuvannia i Dyzainu onlain z pratsevlashtuvanniam v Kyievi | Mate academy, 2021.
URL: https://mate.academy/. [17] Grammarly: Free Online Writing Assistant, 2021. URL: https://www.grammarly.com/.