The Government has announced a £4 million investment to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) into schools. It said AI can help teachers mark work and plan lessons under the new project, which will see AI companies generate content like lesson plans and workbooks.
The project will pool government documents including curriculum guidance, lesson plans and anonymised pupil assessments. These will then be used by AI companies to train their tools so they generate content for classrooms.
Almost half of teachers are already using AI to help with their work, according to a survey from TeacherTapp, but current AI tools are not specifically trained on the documents setting out how teaching should work in England.
The Government said that both AI developers are clear better data is needed to make AI work properly. The content store is targeted at technology companies specialising in education to build tools which will help teachers mark work, create teaching materials for use in the classroom and assist with routine school admin.
“We know teachers work tirelessly to go above and beyond for their students,” said Science Secretary Peter Kyle. “By making AI work for them, this project aims to ease admin burdens and help them deliver creative and inspiring lessons every day, while reducing time pressures they face.
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“This is the first of many projects that will transform how we see and use public sector data. We will put the information we hold to work, using it in a safe and responsible way to reduce waiting lists, cut backlogs and improve outcomes for citizens across the country.”
Best ideas to reduce teacher workload rewarded
The content store, backed by £3 million, includes a partnership with the Open University which is sharing learning resources to be drawn on as part of the project.
This follows Department for Education tests which show providing generative AI models with this kind of data can increase accuracy to 92 percent, up from 67 percent when no targeted data was provided to a large language model.
To encourage AI companies to make use of the datastore, a share of an additional £1 million will be awarded to those who bring forward the best ideas to put the data into practice to reduce teacher workload. Each winner will build an AI tool to help teachers specifically with feedback and marking by March 2025, with applications opening on September 9.
