What are the prospects for additional education for parents with many children in Russian edtech?

The Russian online education market has been booming in recent days following the release of the presidential decree “On measures of social support for large families.” The fact is that the list of measures includes guaranteed additional education (CPE) for parents. However, the rules for providing benefits, as well as the operator of the education system, are not defined in the decree, which gives market participants hope for their piece of the pie.

My interlocutors at large online schools believe that the regulator will determine the requirements for educational service providers (perhaps similar to how it was done as part of the Digital Professions project, which was launched in 2022 to help graduates find jobs in IT ), giving them the opportunity to teach on their educational platforms with subsequent reporting.

Market participants believe that training can be organized on the basis of federal or regional educational institutions, which will develop special courses or programs designed for parents with many children. However, IT platforms of universities are still noticeably behind both in functionality and in content from the leaders of the edtech market, its players emphasize. They predictably insist that the most effective “in terms of time and resources” would be to connect existing online schools with their “developed IT infrastructure and matrix of educational products” to the program.

Among the obvious contenders for this role is the VK holding, which has recently received major preferences in the field of education. For example, parent chats of regional schools are persistently transferred to the Sferum platform in the VK Messenger application.

But there is another option: the authorities can establish a new government structure, then a tender will be announced, and then an orderly row of universities and online platforms will reach out to a new source of funding. Among the obvious candidates who will be interested in participating are the leaders of the industry Smart Ranking: Yandex Workshop, Ultimate Education, Skyeng.

However, the expectation that the sole execution of the president’s orders will be transferred to a large edtech brand raises serious doubts. The authorities have accumulated many questions for market participants, and the main one is the quality of services provided. Back in June last year, the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Communications and IT announced the need for additional checks of DPO (see “Kommersant” dated June 9, 2023). Industry universities offered to involve them in this good cause. However, they have been waiting for three years for what was promised, and so far there has been no progress in this direction. But no one answered the question itself.