What comes first: the K-12 curriculum? Or the K-12 curriculum standards? It’s the egg/chicken question that EdGate is often asked. And this is exactly what visitors to the EdGate stand at BETT 2025 wanted to know.>

BETT UK is the largest education technology exhibition in the world. It occurs every January welcoming over 35,000 people and over 600 Edtech and resource solution providers. This year EdGate exhibited as part of the USA EdTech Coalition in the global showcase area of the enormous ExCeL London exhibition center. The halls of the exhibition center were flooded with educators from around the world looking for new technology and/or content to use for their students, as well as content creators looking to partner with other EdTech suppliers.

Do Standards Lead the way?

To get back to the question at hand, while some companies do begin writing content without referencing the standards, they are ultimately required to align their content to K-12 Curriculum standards, at least if they are serious about ensuring that their content is adopted, purchased and implemented into education systems. Without the security of the specific state or country standards alignment, curriculum that does not mean specific standards may be cast aside.

As one BETT attendee said, “Everything stems from the standards.” We agree. To illustrate:

• Content Management Systems: Users of a content management system need access to standards in order to write content to meet the standards.
  
• Online learning materials, textbooks, educational games, educational videos, etc: Content buyers must see proof of alignment to learning outcomes in order to use materials within the classroom.
  
• Assessments: Assessment items need to meet standards in order to assess if a student has mastered specific learning concepts.
  
• Content delivery systems: Educators have to see the connection between content and the learning standards. This is typically required by the state or governing body.
  
• State Learning Ecosystems: Standards create interoperable digital learning ecosystems and make learning technology more accessible by personalizing resources, interfaces, and content.
  

So from an evolutionary perspective, standards are the egg.

Ministries of Education Looking at Standards for Global Perspective

Our location in the Global Showcase area of the BETT conference hall gave us close access to the various Ministries of Education and government-selected suppliers from countries such as Korea, Italy, Bulgaria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, France and more. The various ministries of Education expressed different interests than those of the educators and EdTech companies we spoke to. The MOE’s are looking for the ability to compare learning standards across the world. We were asked questions like:

• How can I compare my learning standards with the Australia standards or the Common Core standards?
• What are the gaps that we see when comparing standards across the world?
• Are students in some countries being introduced to concepts earlier than other countries?
• And the age-old question: what country has the gold standard set of standards?

Indeed, not all standards are created equal. While some states and countries have amassed volumes of individual learning standards, other countries are getting by with very thin (or non-existent) standards documentation.

EdGate will be hosting a special “International Edition” webinar on February 27th focusing on how to open global markets. EdGate and our international guest panelists will answer many of the questions posed in this BETT recap article and much more.