A new government scheme plans to support teachers and their admin burdens at work, in an effort to improve their workflow and work-life balance.
Guy Thornton, founder of aptitude testing platform Practice Aptitude Tests, has provided some insight on the new project.
What can teachers expect from the new scheme?
The new project’s primary objective is to assist teachers, and it will do this by providing easy access to high-quality, evidence-based, and legally compliant educational materials through a “content store.”
The main outcomes are intended to assist teachers:
Mark homework and exams – AI tools will be able to streamline the process of marking exams, assignments and homework. This will ultimately reduce potential overtime teachers currently face, many of whom use their evenings or weekends to get through marking.
Develop teaching materials for use in classrooms – With the help of current curriculums, AI can be used to help create and deliver engaging lesson plans and learning materials. The combination of AI and current curriculums will allow teachers to use these materials reliably.
Reduce the burden of routine school admin tasks – AI will be able to automate or streamline repetitive admin tasks for teachers, such as tracking pupil attendance, following up on behavioural or attendance issues, and pupil reports. Implementing AI in these tasks significantly reduces workloads, giving teachers more time with their students.
How will this become a reliable tool for teachers?
The project aims to train AI tools by giving AI companies access to government documents which include:
- Anonymised pupil assessments
- Lesson plans
- Curriculums
- Open University resources
By providing AI with relevant resources and data, it can refine and generate reliable content for teachers. In a test conducted by the Department of Education, AI models that were supplied with initial data sets showed a 92% accuracy rate, a significant improvement compared to the 67% accuracy achieved by models without access to such data.
This highlights the importance of supplying AI companies with this data, which may have been a concern for some parents, but due to anonymisation, there should be no safeguarding issues with their child’s data.
The government has also offered a share of £1 million for AI companies that can bring forward the best ideas and build an AI tool that help teachers reduce their workload. AI companies have until March 2025 to submit their best ideas.
What are the potential drawbacks of this project?
One of the potential issues that could arise from this is the over-reliance on AI in the classroom, and this could affect the way students are taught. Teachers will need to adapt their lesson plans to suit different needs, and this may become an additional process for them if lesson plans and materials are being generated through AI.
Context is important when marking homework and assignments, and this may be lost if AI completely takes over the marking process. Some exams award students points if a method is correct – will AI tools be able to mark work correctly?
Similar to context, AI may not be able to interpret language or dialect differences, especially in diverse classrooms that have international students, and this can create a bias when marking homework or exams, ultimately perpetuating stereotypes.
