Among the news of the Budget and teacher strikes, you’d be forgiven for missing an announcement from Microsoft that it is going to embed ChatGPT-style tools within its suite of Office products, chiefly Word, Excel, Teams and PowerPoint.
Called Copilot, this could be a game-changer across the education landscape - from students to teachers and school leaders - because it means that the vast power of artificial intelligence will be at people’s fingertips whenever they sit down to write, revise, mark, plan, assess, strategise or otherwise conduct important educational work.
So far much of the debate around these tools has focused on the impact on students and concerns around cheating and the authenticity of work being produced.
How Microsoft Copilot can cut teachers’ workload
But for teachers, the arrival of Copilot could bring about profound changes in their working lives.
1. Lesson planning
As an obvious frontline example, a teacher could open up Word and ask Copilot to write a lesson plan focused on teaching the integration of vectors to a class of 17-year-olds.
I did this with ChatGPT and within five seconds there was a lesson structure with objectives, suggested materials, a bullet-pointed introduction, a lesson body, a plenary and suggested assessment criteria. It wasn’t perfect but within 10 minutes I could knock it into shape and know it would serve me well for a lesson.
This sort of thing could save teachers precious time and cut back on workload - something that we know is a major issue in most teachers’ lives.
Unleash this within a school’s cloud environment, and it will be even more powerful as it could be asked to base a lesson plan on a particular template, or to learn from colleagues who’ve produced brilliant plans in the past to refine its approach.
2. In-class activities
If it’s resources, rather than planning, that you need, then Copilot could help with this, too.
For example. if students have finished what you have prepared for them, then in a Word document you could ask Copilot to generate more questions on a similar topic, or even to add some “stretch” to it.
The key - as anyone who has experimented with ChatGPT will know - is getting the “prompt” right. Ask in a focused, detailed way and you will be more likely to get exactly what you are after.
Copilot promises to be able to work with images as well as text. Many teachers have played with image generation AIs such as Stable Diffusion, and it is likely that you will be able to ask for rich content in resources, including pictures and/or links to video.
3. Data analysis
Most teachers know the pain of wading through Excel to spot data trends or highlight an issue with a student or class cohort.
But with a powerful AI at your fingertips, it should be possible to ask it to present the data in some neat graphs, charts or other visual format. Or perhaps you could get it to write a 100-word report for each student based on the data on their yearly progress.
If you’re pressed for time before a parents’ evening, you could then ask it to turn these reports into a three-point summary for each child, based on the progress data you have on them since they arrived at the school.
Maybe then you could ask it to cross-reference this with attendance data, helping to spot why a pupil who slipped back was absent more than you’d like, which may account for a drop-off in outcomes.
4. Letter writing
Following on from this, you may want to write a letter to a parent about a pupil who has been late or absent and why this has impacted on their grades. Of course, you can write it yourself - but how much time could be saved by having a template thrown together in seconds when you ask for it?
Indeed, looking at this scenario, as a test I asked the AI to “write me a sensitive email to his parents to ask them to speak to him about it” - and the response back was almost spot on: succinct, polite, clear and to the point.
Copilot will similarly be able to generate letters encouraging parents to sign their children up for a trip, or it could create a persuasive letter encouraging Year 11 students to stay on into the sixth form.
Of course, you may still want to add your own personal touches and you will have to proofread it carefully - but, as a time saver, it could be hugely beneficial.
5. Management help
Turning more towards management, what deputy head would not welcome being able to say, “I missed Ofsted’s online training on its new inspection framework. Generate me a seven-slide PowerPoint to help me present the key changes at a staff meeting.”
Given a web link to the training video on Ofsted’s site, Copilot will be able to do this, via a prompt in PowerPoint.
Perhaps you are a headteacher with a full diary and a very busy day ahead. Plugged into your calendar and email, Copilot will help you get ready for the day by giving a list of key points to focus on as each meeting approaches, adjusting these in response to new information in emails in real time.
If you are the head’s PA, you may have mixed feelings about this. But Copilot will listen to the meetings and take notes for you - not only transcribing the audio (and learning to identify the name of who is speaking) but also suggesting a summary of the meeting and some action points at the end, too.
Get ready for the new reality
None of this is coming in some sci-fi future: it is happening right now, and the implications are profound - the above examples probably only scratch the surface in terms of how teachers and leaders may start using Copilot as it starts to be rolled out in the months ahead.
What’s more, expect other tech giants to potentially be working on something similar, so even schools not embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem may have similar tools to use as well.
It also means that we have to start asking big questions about the work that we do, what we should acknowledge is actually better outsourced to a lightning-fast AI, and how much data we want that system to have access to.
Schools may have to start thinking about forming policies that take seriously the potential workload benefits; the risks to job security, data protection and safeguarding; and the implications for teaching and learning from this new frontier of technology.
However, get this right and it could be a powerful tool in every teacher’s toolbox.
Kester Brewin has taught mathematics in London schools for 25 years. He is now joining the Institute for the Future of Work, focusing on how AI is impacting the workplace
