Every week, one of our reporters will take a look at one of their specialist topics and offer their unique insight. This week, Martin George questions why schools are unable to find rigorous research evidence that could support them in spending their scarce resources on edtech products.

Few words are more likely to divide opinion in education than “edtech”.

For enthusiasts like education secretary Damian Hinds, the tech industry should “launch an education revolution for schools”.

For sceptics like Sir Kevan Collins, head of the Department for Education-backed research fund the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), it is a field full of untested “wonders and snake oil”.

So how can teachers separate the good from the junk before they commit their scarce resources? Often, schools look to rigorous research to inform their decisions. Understandably, there is demand for something similar when it comes to edtech.

But there is an unsettling possibility: that the very nature of edtech products means that they cannot be subject to such rigorous standards of research.

There are two interlinked reasons for this: the source of much of the technology - a highly competitive part of the private sector - and the rapid pace of its development.

It is a point made by Priya Lakhani, the founder and CEO of Century, a teaching and learning platform used by schools.

“If you stop for a year to go through a randomised control trial to see if that initial bit of technology works, you have lost one year of innovation,” she told MPs taking evidence about the fourth industrial revolution.

“No company will be funded to do that ... we spent over £6 million developing this one technology platform. No investor is going to fund you to sit still for a year.”

This problem is acknowledged by the EEF itself in its summary of evidence about digital technology. It warns: “The pace of technological change means that the evidence is usually about yesterday’s technology rather than today’s.” But the EEF adds that average effects “have remained consistent for some time”.

The UCL Institute of Education’s Educate initiative, which aims to help edtech entrepreneurs to “use research evidence to inform the design of their products”, could go some way towards tackling the issue.

But many teachers may instead have to settle for the word-of-mouth recommendations of their peers.

Martin George is a reporter at Tes