- Teaching standards, guidelines and lesson plans will form a new, optimized content store that will train generative teachers. AI to make it more reliable for teachers in England
- A new project will bring together teachers and technology companies to develop and use AI tools that can help grade assignments and save teachers time
- comes as new research shows parents want teachers to use AI to reduce work outside working hours and increase time spent teaching children
Artificial intelligence will be better at helping teachers mark assignments and plan lessons, thanks to a new project announced today by the UK government.
The project, backed by a £4m government investment, will bring together government documents including teaching guidance, lesson plans and anonymised student assessments, which will then be used by AI Companies need to train their tools to generate accurate, high-quality content, such as personalized, creative lesson plans and workbooks, that can be reliably used in schools.
The content store targets education technology companies to create tools that will help teachers grade assignments, create teaching materials for use in the classroom and assist with routine school administration.
It’s like new research shows parents want teachers to use generative AI to allow them to spend more time supporting children in the classroom with face-to-face teaching, supporting the government’s mission to remove barriers to equal opportunities. However, teachers and AI Developers are aware that better data is needed for these technologies to work properly, which is what this project aims to contribute to.
Science Secretary Peter Kyle said:
We know that teachers work tirelessly to go above and beyond for their students.
By doing AI For them, this project aims to ease administrative burdens and help them deliver creative and inspiring lessons on a daily basis, while reducing the time pressures they face.
This is the first in a long series of projects that will transform the way we view and use public sector data. We will harness the information we hold, using it safely and responsibly to reduce waiting lists, cut delays and improve outcomes for people across the country.
Early Childhood Education Minister Stephen Morgan said:
We are committed to removing barriers to opportunity to ensure every child gets the best possible education, and that includes access to the best technological innovations for all. Artificial intelligence, when made safe and reliable, represents an exciting opportunity to help school leaders and teachers better manage life in the classroom.
Today’s announcement, of global significance, marks a major step forward for AI in the classroom. This investment will allow us to safely harness the power of technology to serve our hard-working teachers, easing the pressures and workloads the profession faces and freeing up time to focus on face-to-face teaching.
The £3m-backed content store is a first-of-its-kind approach to processing government data for AIas the UK government continues to use technology to transform public services and improve the lives of people across the country.
It includes a partnership with the Open University which shares learning resources that can be used as part of the project.
This follows Department for Education tests, published today, which show that the provision of AI Models with this type of data can increase accuracy by up to 92%, compared to 67% when no targeted data was provided to a large language model.
Minister Morgan announced the project today during a speech to international education ministers at the Global Education Innovation Summit (GEIS) in Seoul, Republic of Korea. The three-day event, themed “Teacher-Led Classroom Revolution with AI“will see the launch of the Global Alliance for Education and Innovation, of which the UK will be a founding member.
He told the delegation that this landmark initiative will mark the first government-approved store of high-quality educational materials optimized for AI product development and will drive the production of safe, legally compliant, evidence-based tools tailored to the needs of our teachers.
To encourage AI companies to use the database, a further £1 million will be awarded to those who come up with the best ideas for putting data into practice to reduce teachers’ workloads. Each winner will build a AI tool to support teachers in particular with feedback and grading by March 2025, with applications opening on September 9.
Nearly half of teachers already use AI to help them with their work, according to a survey by TeacherTapp, but the AI The tools are not specifically trained on the documents defining how education should work in England.
Chris Goodall, a teacher and head of digital education at the Bourne Education Trust, started using AI when he was teaching business in November 2022. Here, Chris experimented with using ChatGPT to develop a range of course activities, such as custom case studies, to complement his courses.
Today, Chris helps teachers in over 26 primary, secondary and special schools across the Trust improve their lessons and reduce the time they have to spend on administration by using AI.
With his support, teachers used generative methods AI to evaluate their teaching materials, create case studies and other activities to create engaging lessons. Teachers at Auriol Elementary School even illustrated a teacher-written guide encouraging students to read more books with AI– generated text, cartoon creatures and music, encouraging students to become a “literacy monster” and making the program more engaging.
Chris Goodall, teacher and digital education lead at the Bourne Education Trust, said:
AI has been an extremely powerful tool for me and my colleagues at the Bourne Education Trust. It allows us to create engaging and personalised learning experiences for our students whilst significantly reducing the time it takes to create them. Personally, I have used AI to quickly generate structured activities, adapt materials for students with special educational needs, and create more engaging and accessible lessons for all. The time saved allows school staff to focus on what matters most: interacting with students and providing them with individualized feedback and support.
The content store will go even further by providing easy access to high-quality, evidence-based, and legally compliant educational materials. Developed with input from educators, it supports effective teaching practices and fosters collaboration and innovation.
This initiative demonstrates how AIwhen implemented responsibly and ethically, can support and empower teachers to create more dynamic and personalized learning experiences for students.
Ian Cunningham, the technical director of TeachMate, which makes AI tools to help teachers, said:
TeachMateAI is already saving teachers over $10,000 in time each week with our AI tools, but we are ambitious about what more we can do to support teachers and schools. AI Education Store has the potential to enable us and other developers to produce highly accurate tools for the industry much more efficiently, reducing the costs, computations and time it takes us to bring new products to market.
The Department for Education is also committing today to publishing a security framework on AI education products, which are expected to launch later this year. Minister Morgan will meet with education technology companies before setting out clear expectations for the security of AI products for education.
Professor Ian Pickup, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Students at the Open University, said:
We are delighted to be a founding strategic partner of this initiative alongside Ministry of EducationSince our founding in 1969, we have remained at the forefront of innovation in education. As part of this mission, we have been providing free and open-access resources through OpenLearn since 2006 and are witnessing the deployment of AI as a means by which even more learners can benefit from the transformative power of education.
By making content accessible to new educational technology tools, we envision a future where learning materials can be better tailored to personal needs, where learning tasks can be adapted to the right level for student success, and where students can progress at a pace that suits them.
