IRIS Education Named Winner at the Global EdTech Awards 2025
London, UK, 23rd October 2025: IRIS Education (IRIS) has been crowned winner at this year’s Global EdTech Awards, with its purpose-built financial management platform IRIS Financials (Financials) taking home the trophy in the ‘Best School Management Tool’ category.
The awards celebrate the very best in the education sector, recognising innovation, creativity, and passion across individuals, institutions, technology solutions, and their suppliers. The category highlights the essential tools and technology that help schools operate effectively and efficiently, supporting staff in their goal to provide quality education to all students.
Judges were particularly impressed by Financials’ impact across the academies it supports, empowering leaders with the tools and resources to make better-informed decisions faster by consolidating data from multiple sources institution-wide into one, unified, real-time view, streamlining financial operations and enabling schools to redirect admin time into education. Additionally, judges commended IRIS’ approach to Financials’ development, where ongoing market research aligns its roadmap with the real challenges faced by educators, ensuring Financials is shaped by the people who use it. Its annual customer roadshow events encourage feedback and foster knowledge sharing between schools, encouraging important collaboration and communication across the sector.
Simon Freeman, Managing Director for IRIS Education, said: “This recognition is a testament to the hard work of our teams at IRIS Education, who strive to build meaningful solutions and deliver hands-on support for our schools everyday. Working closely with school leaders across the UK and beyond enables us to continue building on our vision to transform how 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 IRIS has been recognised at the Global EdTech Awards, winning the ‘Best EdTech Product – School Management Solutions’ category in 2024 for iSAMS By IRIS, its global management information system built for independent schools.
About IRIS Financials
Financials is IRIS’ powerful financial management solution specifically designed to meet the complex needs of academy trusts in England. Trusted by more than 4,700 academies – 45% of the sector – it transforms how schools manage money, freeing up time and resources to invest back into teaching and learning and empowering leaders to make better-informed financial decisions.
Cloud-hosted, it provides real-time visibility into budget performance to enable school leaders and staff to quickly identify trends and reallocate resources strategically using a single, centralised platform – eliminating spreadsheets, manual processes, and siloes to make way for more time to focus on strategic planning, long-term sustainability, and student outcomes. With deep-rooted flexibility and scalability, the system grows in tandem with its schools, offering modular add-ons and seamless integration capabilities, and its smart automation streamlines complex tasks to save hours of time per week. Financials ensures compliance without manual workarounds, boasting full compatibility with the Department for Education Academies Chart of Accounts, and prioritising cyber-security measures at every step of its development.
To learn more about IRIS Education’s powerful solutions, click here.
ENDS
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 organisations, and accountancy firms that takes the pain out of processes and lets professionals focus on the work they love. Through simplifying, automating and providing insights on everyday mission critical tasks for organisations of all shapes and sizes, IRIS ensures customers can look forward with certainty and confidence.
IRIS is the largest third-party online filer with the UK Government. Ninety-three of the top 100 UK accountancy firms use IRIS software. One in six of the UK’s workforce is paid by IRIS payroll offerings, and globally, six million employees receive their payslip via IRIS software every month. More than 850,000 UK employees are managed by IRIS HR solutions. Over 12,000 UK schools and academies use IRIS, with four million parents and guardians using IRIS apps to connect with their children’s school; 300 million messages are delivered between schools and parents each year, and over £15 million transactional payments are processed every month. IRIS is certified as a Great Place to Work® and recognised as one of The Times Top 50 Employers for Gender Equality in 2023. IRIS is also recognised as one of the Best Workplaces for Wellbeing, one of the Best Workplaces in Tech and one of the Best Workplaces for Women.
To see how IRIS helps organisations get things right first time, every time, visit www.iris.co.uk or follow IRIS Software Group on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.
Media contact:
IRIS Software Group
Jennifer Peters | Associate Director, PR and Communications
news@irisglobal.com