Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The Department for Education (DfE) has recently been talking about the impact of AI on education and making the point that AI is here to stay and is already having a positive impact across society, including the education sector.

Noting that it is important to understand the risks as well as the opportunities, they have set out what they are doing to develop AI in education safely.

The department has launched a call for evidence on AI to better understand how those in education already use generative AI and to gather views from education professionals, academics and the edtech sector on its risks and possibilities.

They also organized a two day ‘hackathon’ for teachers and school leaders to work with data scientists to come up with solutions which use AI to tackle issues such as teacher workload. Results of this exercise will be published next year.

They have also invested £2million in AI tools for Oak National Academy to help develop free resources for teachers empowered by AI such as lesson planners and classroom quizzes.

It has also been reported that they are also exploring the possibility of using AI to benefit teachers including the idea of a virtual ‘assistant’, although they are clear that pupils could not be taught by AI as teachers are irreplaceable and they do not believe that AI could ever be a substitute for teachers’ professional judgement or their relationship with their pupils.