Keyword: EdTech governance

ABSTRACT: Over the last two decades, education systems have become increasingly digital. This digitalization goes beyond classroom teaching processes; it also raises a governance issue concerning where educational data is collected, who provides the digital infrastructure, and at what level decision-making authority is exercised. Based on the OECD's report comparing 29 education jurisdictions, our study classifies these jurisdictions along four dimensions: the level of centralization of decision-making authority, public control over educational data, whether the digital infrastructure is provided by the public sector or through private platforms, and the binding nature of data protection rules. In our study, we transformed these four dimensions into a digital sovereignty score and evaluated the jurisdictions under four governance typologies. Our findings reveal that digital governance in education is not geographically uniform. In systems with a strong tradition of centralized governance, public control over data and infrastructure is more pronounced, while in systems with high levels of school autonomy, dependence on private providers increases. This study examines this dependence within the framework of data colonialism, arguing that the transfer of educational data to private platforms creates a new problem of digital sovereignty.