Investment, Safety & the Importance of Public Sentiment: The New Government’s focus on AI for Education.

If this article proves insightful, you might also be interested in a one-day conference that techUK is hosting on AI and Hyper-automation for Schools, Colleges, and Trusts on 29 October. You can find out more about this here.

Government Investment in AI Edtech Solutions

On 28 August, the UK government announced an investment of £4 million to develop AI tools aimed at reducing teachers' workloads. An additional £1 million will be awarded to companies that propose innovative ideas for applying data to support teachers in providing their students with feedback and marking.

The majority of the £4 million will go towards establishing a new content store, designed to pool government documents like curriculum guidance and anonymised pupil assessments to train future AI models.

The project involves collaboration with educators and institutions like the Open University (hyperlink) to ensure the development of high-quality, evidence-based, and legally compliant AI tools. EdTech companies are encouraged to use the newly available data to create more accurate, efficient, and reliable AI solutions for educational purposes.

Public and Sector Sentiment on AI in Education

In a joint announcement from the Department for Education and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Responsible Technology Adoption Unit, there was reference to recent research on public attitudes towards the use of AI in education. According to the report summary, there is high demand from parents for AI to be used to reduce teachers' workloads, and nearly half of teachers have already integrated AI tools into their work processes.

Conversely, the report highlighted significant concerns around the risk of diminishing essential social and technical skills due to the use of emerging technologies. Furthermore, there is concern that teachers and students could become overly reliant on AI, with potential broader consequences noted by research participants.

The Forthcoming Edtech Safety Framework for AI

The joint release also announced that later this year, the Department for Education will publish a safety framework for AI products in education, outlining clear expectations for the safe and responsible use of AI in schools.

This framework will support trustworthy innovation that is conscious of both public and sector concerns regarding AI integration. The movement towards establishing guardrails for AI in education is a clear response to the anxieties of teachers and school leaders captured in the Department for Education's recent user research report. Published as a summary of their November 2023 hackathon, the report captured practitioner sentiments as well as possible use cases for generative AI in teaching and learning.

AI Process Automation for Education Management

Use cases not heavily addressed in the user research report were those concerning more ‘back-office’ education management applications. With the flurry of activity around AI for administrative process automation, this remains an area where schools, colleges, and trusts could see immediate benefits. Not only are there mappable innovations from a host of industries, but there is a strong case for the exploration of AI within this context as a vehicle for furthering the sector’s understanding of how AI works.

To address these opportunities, techUK will host a one-day conference on 29 October, designed to identify areas of immediate impact for AI in education management. This one-day conference will bring together system, education, and school business leaders along with techUK members and key sector providers to help invigorate the adoption and experimentation of AI.

Oak National Academy Enters the Arena

In the week following the announcement of the government’s £4 million investment, Oak National Academy (which is sponsored by the Department for Education and provides free lesson planning and teacher resources) unveiled its own AI-powered lesson plan builder called Aila. The free tool aims to reduce prep time from 50 minutes to 10 minutes per lesson. With an average of 20 lessons per teacher per week, this amounts to a sizable time-saving tool for our over-burdened teachers.

Time Saved for Students and Staff

In addition to lessening teacher workload, making schools and colleges more navigable for students, staff, and parents is equally critical, considering the sector’s staff retention and student absence challenges.

One particularly innovative institution is the UK’s first Gemini AI Academy, Barton Peveril Sixth Form College. Coinciding with the launch of the fund, the near 5,000-student-strong college announced the launch of its Barton Buddy, an AI-powered digital assistant designed to free up staff time and resources while helping students find the right information within a single platform.

Vice Principal and Chair of the newly established Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operations Officer advisory panel at AI in Education, Chris Loveday, has been leading this work. In addition to rolling out the Barton Buddy, Chris and his team have also been developing the Peveril Assistant, which delivers the same effective AI triaging service to staff.

Barton Peveril is among a handful of schools and colleges already realising the benefits of AI; however, as indicated by the Department for Education's work, safety as well as practitioner and public sentiment concerns remain a barrier. This is not to mention the persistent hurdles of capital, skills, and connectivity highlighted in the Department for Education’s 2022-2023 Technology in Schools Survey.

techUK’s Education and EdTech programme has been warmly received by the sector, and we remain committed to supporting both the education system and the EdTech sector in overcoming the barriers to unlocking better outcomes through technology.

Help Shape the Development of AI in Education

We are pleased to announce that AI in Education is establishing an EdTech advisory panel, which will be chaired by techUK. If you are an EdTech leader and are interested in advising on the future of AI in Education, we’d love to hear from you. You can register your interest by filling in this form.