United Press is a UK PR agency for edtech and e-learning platforms — helping learning companies earn credibility with the educators, institutions, parents and learners who decide whether to adopt them.
Why edtech adoption depends on trust
Education buyers are careful for good reason: they’re responsible for outcomes, budgets and, often, children. A platform that appears in the education press, is backed by evidence of learning gains, and is endorsed by credible voices earns the trust that long procurement cycles demand. Earned media is how edtech moves from “promising” to “proven” in the eyes of cautious institutional buyers.
The media that matters for UK e-learning
Education titles such as Tes, FE News and the edtech trade press reach teachers, leaders and further-education decision-makers, while UKTN and the business press reach investors and the wider market. Parenting and consumer media matter for direct-to-learner products. We help you target the outlets that influence your specific buyers.
How we approach edtech PR
We build coverage around what educators actually care about: evidence of efficacy, real classroom or learner outcomes, and informed commentary on the debates shaping education — from AI in learning to the attainment gap. We package your outcome data into research journalists want, brief your spokespeople, handle outreach, and report on results. Coverage is earned, not guaranteed.
FAQ
We sell into schools with long procurement cycles — can PR help? Yes. Sustained credibility in the education press keeps you front of mind through those long cycles.
Do you need proof of learning outcomes? The stronger your evidence, the stronger the story — but we help you communicate credibly at any stage.
Tell us who you serve and we’ll map a realistic plan to build trust in the education market.
PR for UK e-learning platforms: the academic year, the procurement year, and the press that sits between them
E-learning is not one British market but four, each with its own press and its own money. Schools are covered by Tes, first published as a supplement in 1910 and now owned by Tes Global, and by Schools Week, launched in 2014 and published alongside FE Week by EducationScape. Further education has FE Week and FE News; higher education has its own titles; corporate learning has Training Journal and the CIPD’s People Management. Bett fills the ExCeL in London every January, with the British Educational Suppliers Association at the centre of it. Around all of them sit the Department for Education, Ofsted, Ofqual and Jisc. Teachers are the most product-fatigued buyers in Britain.
January belongs to Bett
The show at ExCeL London every January concentrates the year’s edtech coverage into a fortnight, and the education press plans around it. That means editors are approached by hundreds of suppliers at once. Brief the trade titles in November and December about what is genuinely new, and treat the show as the moment your story is confirmed rather than the moment you start telling it.
Schools Week is investigative
It was set up to report on English education properly, and it covers academy trust finances, procurement, contracts and the gap between claim and outcome. That makes it a difficult place for marketing and an excellent place for a supplier with something defensible. If a multi-academy trust has bought your platform and will explain why, that is the kind of story it takes seriously.
Efficacy evidence or nothing
Education journalists and school leaders both ask what the evidence is, and the standards they apply come from independent trial evidence rather than vendor testimonials. Be honest about what you have: an internal usage study, an external evaluation, a pilot with a named trust, or nothing yet. Saying that evidence is being gathered is respected. Implying evidence you do not hold is not.
Budgets follow the school year
English schools plan spending around a financial year ending in March and an academic year starting in September, so purchasing conversations cluster in the spring and early summer. Department for Education funding announcements move the whole sector at once. Pitching a school procurement story in the last week of July, when everyone has gone, wastes a good story entirely.
Children’s data comes first
Anything used by pupils sits under UK data protection law and the Information Commissioner’s Office code covering online services likely to be accessed by children, alongside the Department for Education’s expectations of schools. Publish where data is hosted, what is collected, retention periods and your position on advertising and profiling. Education reporters ask these questions early and write up the silence.
Four markets, four packs
A safeguarding-conscious primary school, a college chasing achievement rates, a university managing its virtual learning environment and a corporate learning and development team share almost nothing. Different regulators, different budget holders, different vocabulary, different trade titles. One release covering all four reads as though it was written for none of them, because it was.
What UK education media publishes about edtech
Education journalism in Britain is closer to public spending reporting than to technology reporting. It follows money, outcomes and accountability, and it is well practised at spotting a sales pitch.
- Adoption at named institutions, where a school, trust or college explains what it bought, what it replaced and what changed for teachers and learners
- Evidence and evaluation, including independent trial results, pilot findings and honest reporting on interventions that did not produce the expected effect
- Policy and funding developments, from Department for Education announcements and curriculum change to what a spending decision means for classroom technology
- Workload and staffing, particularly technology that measurably reduces teacher administration, which is one of the most persistent stories in English education
- Data protection, safeguarding and accessibility, covering how pupil data is handled and whether a platform works for learners with additional needs
- Sector research from bodies including the British Educational Suppliers Association and Jisc, showing what institutions are actually buying and using
Where edtech pitches fail
Education reporters receive supplier approaches constantly and reject nearly all of them. The reasons repeat, and most of them are avoidable before you write a single line.
- Claiming to fix education. Teachers have heard it since the interactive whiteboard. Describe one narrow task your product does better and let the reader judge the significance.
- Testimonials in place of evidence. A delighted quote from a head of department is marketing. An evaluation with a comparison group, a sample and a stated method is something a journalist can print.
- No answer on pupil data. Any product used by children raises data protection questions immediately. If you cannot state where data lives and how long you keep it, expect to be dropped.
- Pitching into the wrong week. Half term, the run-up to examinations, results days and the end of the summer term all remove education newsrooms and school leaders from the conversation.
- Mixing schools and corporate learning. A workplace training platform pitched to Schools Week, or a classroom tool sent to Training Journal, tells the editor nobody checked who they write for.
Not sure which of these applies to your story? Send it to ceo@unitedpress.uk and we will tell you straight.
What UK e-learning founders ask us
Do we need trial evidence before approaching the education press?
Not necessarily, but you need to be straight about what you have. Education journalists respect a supplier who says a pilot is running at three named schools with results expected in the summer. They react badly to vague claims of proven impact. Independent evaluation carries the most weight; a well-documented pilot with real usage data is a workable starting point.
Is Bett worth building a campaign around?
It is worth building a calendar around, which is not the same thing. The show concentrates attention and puts the trade press, buyers and international visitors in one building in January, but hundreds of suppliers compete for the same coverage. Brief editors in advance about what is genuinely new, arrange meetings early, and have something to announce that would be news without the show.
How do we get a school or trust to talk publicly?
Ask the senior leader who signed off the purchase, not the classroom teacher, and make it easy. Offer to draft the quote for approval, be clear which publication it is for, and accept that many trusts require central communications sign-off. Some will decline outright on procurement grounds. Building two or three willing reference institutions is worth months of effort.
Which UK data sources do education journalists trust?
Department for Education statistical releases, Ofsted and Ofqual publications, school census and workforce data, and research from Jisc and the British Educational Suppliers Association. Independent evaluation evidence carries particular authority. Your own platform data can work when aggregated properly and described honestly, but it is treated as supplier information and will be labelled as such in the copy.
We sell to employers, not schools. Does any of this apply?
Some of it. The corporate learning market runs on different press, chiefly Training Journal and the CIPD’s People Management, plus human resources and business titles. Buying cycles follow the company financial year rather than the academic one, and the questions concern retention, compliance training and skills gaps. Do not send that story to the schools press expecting interest.
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