Episode 10: Jo Stone THE RECKONING

Nine episodes interrogated education technology — the builders who create it, the suppliers who sell it, the implementers who deploy it, the interrogators who question it. Jo Stone is the one who has to make it work. Eight thousand pupils, twenty schools, primary, secondary and special. After all the promises, evidence and criticism, what actually survives implementation?

Jo Stone is PedTech Lead at Discovery Schools Trust, implementing education technology at scale across twenty schools and around eight thousand pupils. She sits exactly where the pitch meets reality — choosing what to buy, getting teachers to use it, and proving it made a difference. She's been stung both ways, and she's candid about why.

IN THIS EPISODE

Why implementation starts with the curriculum and the classroom problem, not the tool — and why doing it the other way round is how it fails

EdTech as enabler, not driver — the tool enhances the pedagogy already in the room, it doesn't replace it

The platform working group — the six-person trust panel (CTO to governance lead) that vets every new app on curriculum fit, overlap with existing tools, and the data and safeguarding question of where it's stored

Infrastructure before apps — Wi-Fi and connectivity first; primary is one-to-one device, secondary and special still on the journey, and the roughly 50% good-internet reality that breaks deployments

Teacher development time — dedicated weekly time on top of PPA (it started at two hours, now one) to trial and plan, because resistance is usually time and overwhelm, not the tool

The 60% adoption benchmark (echoing Neelam Parmar) — and the one platform Discovery sits well above it

Why training is never 'done' — CPD recurs every year as staff move on and ECTs arrive; the half-termly ped tech PLC and open days with live lessons built around four or five apps

Blended Learning Champions — classroom teachers who lead adoption in their own schools, because teachers buy from teachers

What suppliers underestimate — the six-month-to-a-year support window after go-live, and the assumption people will just know how to navigate it

How impact gets tracked at scale — usage reports, an annual review, and the budget call when a platform isn't used; never 'a bad product', always 'wrong fit or wrong training'

The honest adoption maths — give a platform a good year; around 30% act on the initial training, the rest follow once success is cascaded at staff meetings

Onboard experienced teachers first — they see where a tool solves a real problem in ways ECTs can't yet, and their creative use becomes the case study suppliers should want

Choosing between expensive-with-evidence, cheap-but-loved and middling-with-case-studies — why piloting across your stronger schools beats the spec sheet

The redesign she'd make — national digital teaching-and-learning standards (England has infrastructure standards but not these; Ireland, Wales and Scotland do)

Why AI is jumping the queue — you can't layer AI onto schools without devices, connectivity and embedded platforms first, and quietly adding AI behind the scenes forces a whole safeguarding and policy rewrite. The ask: transparency

Episode 10 closes THE RECKONING — and Series One.

LINKS

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and everywhere via Podbean

Full episode and transcript: https://podcast.co/b2educationunpacked

EdTech Sales Mastery course: https://seventhsibling.co.uk/self-paced-courses

Website: https://seventhsibling.co.uk