IRIS Education Named Winner of Global EdTech Awards 2025

London, UK, 23 October 2025: IRIS Education (IRIS) was named the winner of this year’s Global EdTech Awards, with its bespoke financial management platform, IRIS Financials (Financials), taking home the trophy in the ‘Best School Management Tool’ category.

The awards celebrate the best in the education sector, recognizing the innovation, creativity and passion of individuals, institutions, technology solutions and their suppliers. This category highlights important tools and technologies that help schools operate effectively and efficiently, supporting staff in achieving their goal of providing a quality education to all students.

Judges were particularly impressed with Financials’ impact across the academies it supports, empowering leaders with the tools and resources to make more informed and faster decisions by combining data from multiple sources across the institution into one, unified, real-time view, simplifying financial operations and enabling schools to shift admin time into education. Additionally, the judges praised IRIS’s approach to Finance development, where ongoing market research aligns its roadmap with the real challenges faced by educators, ensuring Finance is shaped by the people who use it. Its annual customer roadshow event encourages feedback and encourages knowledge exchange between schools, driving vital collaboration and communication across the sector.

Simon Freeman, Managing Director, IRIS Education, said: “This award is testament to the hard work of our team at IRIS Education, who strive to build meaningful solutions and provide direct support for our schools every day. Working with school leaders across the UK and beyond allows us to continue building on our vision to transform the way schools manage their operations and free up their valuable time to focus on what matters most – their students.”

This is the second year in a row that IRIS has been recognized at the Global EdTech Awards, winning the ‘Best EdTech Product – School Management Solution’ category in 2024 for iSAMS By IRIS, a global management information system built for independent schools.

About IRIS Finance

Financial is a powerful IRIS financial management solution designed specifically to meet the complex needs of academy trusts in the UK. Trusted by more than 4,700 academies – 45% of the sector – it transforms the way schools manage money, freeing up time and resources to reinvest in teaching and learning, and empowering leaders to make more informed financial decisions.

Hosted in the cloud, the system provides real-time visibility into budget performance enabling school leaders and staff to quickly identify trends and strategically reallocate resources using one centralized platform – eliminating spreadsheets, manual processes and silos to free up more time to focus on strategic planning, long-term sustainability and student outcomes. With deep-rooted flexibility and scalability, the system grows along with schools, offering modular add-ons and seamless integration capabilities, and its intelligent automation simplifies complex tasks to save hours per week. Financials ensures compliance without manual workarounds, has full compatibility with the Department of Education’s Academy Chart of Accounts, and prioritizes cybersecurity measures at every step of its development.

To learn more about IRIS Education’s advanced solutions, click here.

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About IRIS Software Group 

IRIS Software Group is a global provider of mission-critical software and one of the UK’s largest privately held software companies. IRIS provides software solutions and services for finance, HR and payroll teams, educational organizations, and accounting companies that take the pain out of processes and allow professionals to focus on the work they love. By simplifying, automating and providing insight into everyday mission critical tasks for organizations of all shapes and sizes, IRIS ensures customers can look forward to them with certainty and confidence.

IRIS is the largest third party online reporter working within the UK Government. Ninety-three of the UK’s top 100 accountancy firms use IRIS software. One in six of the UK workforce is paid through IRIS’ payroll offering, and globally, six million employees receive their payslips through IRIS software every month. More than 850,000 employees in the UK are managed by IRIS HR solutions. More than 12,000 schools and colleges in England use IRIS, with four million parents and carers using the IRIS app to connect with their children’s schools; 300 million messages are sent between schools and parents every year, and more than £15 million of transactional payments are processed every month. IRIS is certified as a Great Place to Work® and recognized as one of The Times’ Top 50 Companies for Gender Equality in 2023. IRIS is also recognized as one of the Best Workplaces for Well-Being, one of the Best Workplaces in Technology, and one of the Best Workplaces for Women.

To see how IRIS helps organizations do the right thing every time, visit www.iris.co.uk or follow the IRIS Software Group on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

Media contact:
IRIS Software Group
Jennifer Peters | Associate Director, Public Relations and Communications
[email protected]