The future of AI in Education

One of the hot topics at the Schools and Academies Show 2024 was how AI can be used efficiently and ethically in education going forward. With AI technology becoming more sophisticated by the day, both opportunities and problems present themselves to pupils and educators.

It is clear that AI will play a role in education in the future, but how it is implemented, what areas it is utilised in, and what fail-safes are deployed to deter misuse, are all concerns educational organisations will have.

Ofqual’s stance on AI in assessment and teaching

At the SAAShow, Ofqual led a discussion titled ‘What’s Next for Assessment?’. With a focus on digitisation in assessment, Sir Ian Bauckham touched on the topic of how AI can be utilised efficiently by examining bodies and Ofqual.

Ofqual’s concerns on AI

Sir Ian Bauckham outlined a few concerns about using AI in teaching and assessment, such as:

• Marking assessment papers cannot be done by AI alone.
• Robust measures are being used to ensure students are not using generative AI tools to create their coursework for them. This will become more difficult to detect as AI technology becomes more advanced.
• If assessments are digitised, the data from millions of exam papers must be kept secure from public AI tools such as ChatGPT to protect privacy.

Ofqual’s suggestions for AI in education

AI is already being used in innovative ways behind the scenes of some classrooms. Sir Ian Bauckham highlighted ways in which AI could effectively be used in teaching:

• In the future, AI could be deployed in the classroom to identify common errors so that subsequent lessons can be adapted to bridge knowledge gaps.
• AI is already being used by some teachers to automate administrative jobs, freeing up their time for more valuable tasks in the classroom.

The Labour party’s step towards AI in schools

In August 2024, the new Labour-led government announced a ‘AI Tools for Education’ funding competition, encouraging software developers and technology innovators to create AI tools that focus on marking work, creating teaching materials and assisting with routine school admin.

Already available free to teachers is an AI-powered lesson planning tool, developed by Oak National Academy. ‘Aila’ is a tool that automatically generates personalised lesson plans and teaching resources within minutes, potentially saving teachers hours each week. Try this simple-to-use AI assistant on the Oak National Academy website.

A warning from the EdTech Summit

Speaking back in May 2024 at the EdTech Summit, Head of Digital Education for Bourne Education Trust, Chris Goodall, said “the first thing I’ve noticed is how wide the divide is across the whole country, and in fact, across the world.

“We have got schools that are absolutely flying ahead with this, and some would argue, quite too fast, introducing things that perhaps they’re not thinking about clearly, all the way to the other end, which is people who are banning this, trying to block it and keep it out of schools.”

Chris Goodall’s words accentuate the importance of ensuring every school across the country has the same access to AI and the same opportunities the technology presents. Otherwise, the technological divide will only get wider.