The United Kingdom is a world leader in educational technology. This, perhaps, is nowhere more evident than at the annual BETT show, which attracts more than 7,000 international visitors, meeting to network and promote their business to a wide audience of buyers, suppliers and business partners.

One of only a few international conferences with enough pull to unite global opinion shapers and policy makers, BETT reflects the UK’s dominance and robust education sector. Now approaching its 28^th year, BETT demonstrates just how mature - how successful - our market is.

But for me, a Founder and CEO of a UK education technology start up, and from speaking with others in the UK education tech start up community, BETT suggests something else: that there’s a big opportunity in offing – a big established market to disrupt. A space to shake up over the next few years through the innovative application of technology, whether that be social gaming, social mobile or cloud technology (to name but a few) - all will have a big impact, and change the direction of many a BETT attendee’s business model.

While the UK is a mature market leader, we’re running second to the United States in this field of education innovation. Members of the UK education tech community that I speak with, excitedly recount war stories of US companies who are benchmarking success in our sector: companies like Edmodo, Grockit or Khan Academy are easy examples of US home runs, and make great for chat at networking events - in less than five years Grockit has raised over $24M to target the lucrative GMAT and SAT market.

With an educational footprint ten times the size of the UK, and a market leading investment community, what can be learnt from the US entrepreneurs forging ahead in this sector? How can we, the UK Education Technology community, develop our own pipeline to nurture this emergent sector, support our talent base and accelerate UK growth - develop our own homeruns?

We must first face core challenges: how can small UK start ups engage a large enough group of schools and educators to test out their business hypothesises, pilot product - and then go on to build a compelling evidence base that demonstrates value to educators, government bodies and investment partners alike? Key blockers that affect anyone starting up in this sector.

Someone whose persistence and hard work has recently paid off is Tom Hooper, the Founder of the BrightSpark Education tutoring platform. Earlier this year TSL Education, owners of TES, acquired a 50 per cent stake in Tom’s business, and in return Tom gets to leverage TES’s visibility and authority. A great strategic fit for Tom and his team – and big congratulations are due.

My company, Education Games Network went down a different route, through venture funding. We are fortunate to be backed by legendary engineer investor Michael Birch, of Bebo.com success. Michael and ProFounders Capital are one of a few UK venture firms investing in education technology but if we’re going to compete internationally, other well-capitalised investors need to come through.

So to help matters, in late November we’re hosting Start Up Weekend, a specific Education event that is based around the tried and tested Start Up Weekend formula (of which, 35,000 people have been through the doors!). The event is an intense 54-hour event, which focuses on building a web or mobile application with an education focus which could form the basis of a credible business.

The weekend brings together people with different skill sets: software developers, educators, graphic designers, and business people - to build applications and develop a commercial case around them – culminating in a pitch to a panel of industry experts and investors on the Sunday evening. Already supported by NESTA, Pearson, 02 Learn and Ariadne Capital, we hope this event will help to kick start the education tech start up scene in the UK.

StartUp Weekend is supported by the Gates Foundation, and in partnership they have created a new vertical in education for people, like me, who want to host education technology specific weekends, around the world. Sure proof that things are hotting up in our sector.

Outside of this, Pearson is doing great work with Innova8 Competition - but perhaps looking across the pond again, gives a good indication of the direction of the market. Last month, the first education specific business accelerator programme - Imagine K-12 run by Geoff Ralston, ex Yahoo - completed, and the mentored group of start ups eagerly pitched their ideas to a panel of industry experts.

What made this an interesting, landmark event in our sector? The panel comprised of education technology veterans and stalwarts - but now industry giants attend, like Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn success: people who understand how technology will change education in the future (and wish to get in early).

While the UK is not lacking in ambition, aptitude or talent – and while great things are happening and underway - many within our education tech start up community feel that there is need for recognition and support at a governmental level if we are going to be more that just conference hosts in the future. Things are looking interesting.

Edward Baker is the UK Host of StartUp Weekend Education 25th- 27th November. Further details are available from: http://londonedu.startupweekend.org

Edward can be contacted at ed@educationgamesnetwork.com