Tech companies are being urged to create better AI tools for reducing teachers’ workloads, as ministers announced they would give AI models special access to the Department for Education’s (DfE) bank of resources.
The education minister Stephen Morgan said the move was “a huge step forward for AI in the classroom”, with the government spending £3m to create a “content bank” of official assessments, curriculum guidance and teaching materials.
While many teachers say they already use AI to assist them, current AI tools are not trained on material specifically designed or approved for use in England’s classrooms.
The new content bank will allow developers to train their AI models to generate “accurate, high-quality content” such as workbooks and lesson plans, according to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).
A further £1m will be awarded to developers in a competition for the best ideas to use the DfE’s database in reducing teacher workload. Each winner will build an AI tool to help teachers with feedback and marking tasks by March 2025.
Morgan told an international education conference in South Korea that the initiative was the first government-approved store of high-quality education material optimised for AI development.
“Artificial intelligence, when made safe and reliable, represents an exciting opportunity to give our school leaders and teachers a helping hand with classroom life,” Morgan said.
“This investment will allow us to safely harness the power of tech to make it work for our hard-working teachers, easing the pressures and workload burdens we know are facing the profession and freeing up time, allowing them to focus on face to face teaching.”
A research report, published on Wednesday by the DfE, found that using targeted content to train an AI model could increase its accuracy from 67% to 92%.
Pepe Di’Iasio, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said AI had the potential to ease the “overwhelming” burden faced by teachers, if concerns about its reliability could be resolved.
“However, it is important to recognise that AI is a tool, and not something that can replace the human expertise and interaction with students that can only be provided by our highly skilled and professional education staff,” Di’Iasio said.
“The immediate problem is that we are struggling to recruit and retain enough teachers because of the previous government’s erosion of pay and conditions over the past decade and a half. This is the issue which needs urgent attention.”
Chris Goodall, a teacher and head of digital education at the Bourne Education Trust, said he had been using AI to create classroom material since November 2022, and now helps teachers use it to improve lessons and cut down on administration in 26 schools across the trust.
“I’ve used AI to quickly generate scaffolded activities, adapt materials for students with special educational needs, and create more engaging lessons that are accessible to all. The time saved allows school staff to focus on what matters most, interacting with students and providing individualised feedback and support,” Goodall said.
A study of attitudes to AI in education, published by the DfE and DSIT’s responsible technology adoption unit, found that most parents supported teachers using AI to support their work but were more hesitant about direct interaction by pupils.
The study noted that participants were worried about “the loss of key social and technical skills and reduced human contact time leading to unintended adverse outcomes”.
