2025 Top 7 Trends and Priorities for Education - K-12

The Challenge

Manage AI in education.

Schools are struggling to keep up with rapid technological changes, particularly generative AI, which poses risks of exposing confidential data and introducing compliance issues. The challenge is compounded by the ineffectiveness of traditional hierarchical management controls in many education organizations.

Why It Matters

Ensure responsible AI use.

AI has the potential to significantly impact pedagogy, administration, and community engagement. However, without proper governance, the uncontrolled use of AI can lead to compliance and legal risks. Establishing responsible AI practices is crucial to build trust and confidence in the technology and to avoid future challenges.

The Solution

Understand AI capabilities

Develop a strong understanding of what generative AI can do. This involves recognizing the right use cases, experimenting with AI applications, and identifying potential risks.

Develop policy mechanisms

In response to the impact of generative AI, work to develop appropriate policy mechanisms. This involves creating governance policies and processes to implement AI consistently within the organization.

The Challenge

Adjust to generative AI.

The sudden rise and widespread use of generative AI has caught educational institutions by surprise. Schools are struggling to understand its pedagogical impacts and how to adapt to an autonomized administrative structure.

Why It Matters

Transform education.

AI has the potential to transform classrooms just as calculators and the internet did in the past. Educators must embrace generative AI to enhance learning and development, despite concerns about its effects on education and student learning.

The Solution

Limit risks

Provide meaningful solutions to limit risks rather than relying on bans or ineffective plagiarism detection tools.

Extract value

Strategically embed generative AI in educational processes so students, teachers, and administrative staff can benefit from these technological advancements.

The Challenge

Adapt to exponential change.

ChatGPT reached one million users in just five days, showcasing the unprecedented speed and reach of new technology distribution. Generative AI, quantum computing, and other technologies are driving exponential IT changes, leaving education IT organizations scrambling to respond.

Why It Matters

Bridge the gap.

Exponential IT is a framework designed to help IT leaders elevate their maturity and value-creation capabilities. It aims to close the gap between the rapid progression of technological change and the linear progression of IT's ability to manage that change, enabling IT to remain relevant.

The Solution

Elevate IT leadership

Justify IT as an investment, focusing on delivering new functionality and pursuing a zero-trust security journey, ultimately positioning IT as permeating every process.

Enhance capabilities

Emphasize the capabilities that applications deliver by focusing on data independently of applications, moving infrastructure to cloud providers when valid, and building a well-governed model for resource prioritization.

The Challenge

Manage the acceleration of digital transformation.

Undertake a digital transformation to respond to the accelerating expectations of stakeholders in the digital economy. School boards must leverage a validated view of their business capabilities to prioritize opportunities, initiatives, and investments, delivering measurable outcomes and unlocking direct value.

Why It Matters

Thrive in a digital-first world.

A K-12 digital transformation strategy challenges existing operational and value assumptions. It addresses four fundamental goals: unifying digital possibilities with stakeholder experiences, developing new teaching and learning processes, enabling institutional agility, and recoding the organizational DNA to thrive in a digital-first world.

The Solution

Map stakeholder journeys

Begin a digital transformation by mapping stakeholder journeys across the K-12 value chain, identifying pain points and opportunities. These are then developed into projects, prioritized, funded, and scheduled.

Embrace new technologies

Determine what technologies to embrace, what processes to automate, and what new process models to create. This unifies digital possibilities with K-12 stakeholder experiences.

The Challenge

Address the rising level of crisis.

The K-12 education sector is facing a significant crisis due to cyberattacks. Criminals and nation-state attackers have a higher success rate in this sector compared to others. The recovery rate after attacks is the slowest, and the cost of remediation is higher than the global average for all sectors.

Why It Matters

Education is facing overwhelming growth in threat vectors.

The profitability of ransomware is driving criminal organizations to invest in new technology, including AI, to target K-12 education systems. Meanwhile, IT departments are under pressure to reduce costs. New attack surfaces are emerging as educational institutions become prime targets for nation-states aiming to influence or corrupt teaching and learning and assault contrarian ideologies.

The Solution

Adopt zero-trust security

K-12 education organizations must adopt a zero-trust security approach, creating a default deny environment for all services. This will increase friction and may lead to a perceived decline in service quality that the organization should be prepared for.

Schools need to integrate security and privacy processes from the start of all new technology projects to comply with growing legislation as expectations continue to expand.

The Challenge

Break down silos of isolation.

Educational organizations face unproductive isolation due to history, politics, matrixed accountability, multiple funding sources, and tradition. With pressures from declining enrollment, increasing digital expectations, competition, reduced government commitment, and talent shortages, IT investments must be deployed and sustained more effectively.

Why It Matters

Target inefficiencies.

Eliminating inefficient processes and structures while improving effectiveness is challenging across the industry. Duplication of services in local, enterprise, and shared IT groups becomes a natural target for change. Successful IT unification is about delivering services under a unified vision, not centralizing IT around a single authority.

The Solution

Establish the mandate

Ensure everyone is on the same page and committed to the process by establishing the mandate and gaining buy-in from key stakeholders to unify the departments.

Assess current and future states

Using the overarching strategy, evaluate IT services and capabilities to determine the current state. Identify the future state by considering economies of scope and scale, and plan the roadmap accordingly.

The Challenge

Applications are ephemeral; data is enduring.

Applications such as ERPs are frequently replaced despite their high costs, but the data they manage remains constant and valuable. This enduring nature of data necessitates a new focus, as data outlives the applications that manage it.

Why It Matters

Rethink IT investments.

Schools are questioning the value of large administrative systems that do not directly contribute to their core missions. They are shifting their focus to data quality improvements, which enhance decision-making. Some are even reallocating ERP funds to strategic data investments.

The Solution

Establish data governance

Start by creating effective data governance processes and policies. This foundation ensures that data is managed consistently and reliably, improving data quality.

Enhance data quality

Relentlessly improve data quality through better processes and procedures. High-quality data serves as the basis for reliable business intelligence and better decision-making.