Cluey delisting vote, HolonIQ tilts K-12, AI conference at Geelong

Digital Attitudes, 13 August 2026

Thursday, and Australian ed-tech is having its consolidation morning. Cluey holds its exit vote at 11 in Sydney, HolonIQ's 2026 list has quietly tilted back to K-12, and the Victorian sector meets in Geelong to work out what a 2027 classroom stack looks like.

Cluey Learning asks shareholders today to take it private

Cluey Ltd holds its general meeting today at 11 am AEST in Sydney, where shareholders vote on the resolution to voluntarily delist from the ASX (Cluey shareholder notice via Kalkine). The company argues the listing no longer earns its keep, citing low trading liquidity and about A$500,000 a year in listing and compliance costs it wants back on the balance sheet. If the 75 per cent threshold is met, the effective removal date is pencilled in for 6 October 2026, with a minimum holding buy-back for small investors and trading available for at least a month before removal from quotation (TradingView on the delisting timeline). Cluey is also closing Code Camp's UK operations by 31 August 2026 to sharpen focus on the ANZ market.

Why this matters: Cluey has been the sole pure-play K-12 tutoring-tech company on the ASX, and its exit reads as the end of a particular thesis. That thesis was that a listed structure could carry the compliance, marketing, and R&D costs of an Australian tutoring platform through a market where every parent's default is now a chat window with a general-purpose model. For principals and school business managers looking at the tutoring vendor list for 2027, the practical question is not whether Cluey survives (unlisted, less scrutiny, cheaper) but whether the paid one-to-one tutoring category is being priced out by free AI at the household level. The A$500,000 saving is not the story. The story is that a listed Australian ed-tech company has decided the public market can no longer price what it does.

The 2026 HolonIQ ANZ EdTech 50 leans back to K-12

HolonIQ published the 2026 Australia and New Zealand EdTech 50 earlier this month (mentioned briefly in Friday's brief). The under-the-fold detail is worth reading. K-12 has edged back ahead of workforce training at 36 per cent versus 34 per cent, reversing a multi-year lean toward corporate upskilling. K-12 Support and Career Support and Development are tied as the largest sub-sectors at 12 per cent each, which means the venture money is flowing to teacher-capacity and student-pathway products rather than new curriculum or content. B2C startups now make up half the list, matching B2B for the first time. New Zealand claims 32 per cent of the cohort, roughly double its usual six or seven company showing (HolonIQ's 2026 ANZ EdTech 50 announcement via QS).

Why this matters: the list is the venture money's read of where the sector is going. The K-12 tilt back is the interesting one for Australian schools, because it says the private market has decided the classroom, not the corporate LMS, is where AI workflow work has to happen next. For school leaders sitting in front of a Toddle, MagicSchool, or SchoolAI conversation this term, the HolonIQ list is a rough working short-list of which vendor is likely to still be shipping product in 2028. The B2C tilt matters too, because a growing share of the classroom's competition is not another school platform, it is a parent's phone. And the New Zealand jump is worth watching, because the Auckland cohort now includes several teacher-facing AI products that will be at the door of Australian independent schools inside twelve months.

AI in Education Conference at Nyaal Banyul lands today

The Informa AI in Education Conference for Victoria runs today at the Nyaal Banyul Geelong Convention and Event Centre, with the Victorian government sector, the independent sector, and a Toddle-anchored vendor floor all in the same room (Informa conference page). Wodonga Senior Secondary College's Nick Gissing (Head of AI and Innovation) walks through the school's personalised chatbot work, and Ivanhoe Grammar's Rachelle Crameri (Director of AI and Digital Learning Innovation) presents on the teacher-built learning chatbots Ivanhoe has been running with students (Ivanhoe's digital innovation and AI programme).

Why this matters: yesterday's brief flagged the assessment question. Today the interesting thread is procurement. Gissing and Crameri are both running teacher-built AI stacks at Australian schools, not vendor-shipped products, and the fact that they are the case studies on the program says something the sales floor cannot say for itself. If the room's stated preferred pattern for 2027 is teacher-built or school-built chatbots on top of a large-model contract, that has real implications for every LMS and tutoring vendor at the Nyaal Banyul door. Toddle's Gold sponsorship in that context is not a coincidence, it is a bet that most Australian schools will not build their own stack and will need a platform ready to plug the model into. The read for school IT leaders not attending: watch which vendor gets mentioned on the case-study slide, not which vendor has the biggest booth.

Three signals, one direction, and the 2027 tutoring vendor selection did not get any easier this morning. More on the operational landscape at digitalattitudes.com.au.