Teachers and school leaders will be tasked with exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can reduce their workload in an experiment being launched by the Department for Education.
Representatives from schools and trusts will attend an event in London on 30 and 31 October to participate in a “hackathon” led by the department.
Participants will be asked to experiment with AI to test its potential in several scenarios, for example, whether it could write a lesson plan or accurately mark exam papers.
Teachers and school leaders have been invited to join from trusts, including Harris Federation, Star Academies, Outwood Grange Academies Trust and Inspiration Trust.
The DfE said the event will support the government’s ambition to reduce working hours for teachers and leaders by five hours per week.
It will share the best solutions with the department’s workload reduction task force. A demonstration of the tools created will then be made available for schools across the country to test and use.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan said: “AI has huge potential to transform the way we do things, from providing personalised support for pupils to helping tackle teacher workload.
“But to reap the benefits in education, we need to improve our understanding of how AI works and safely. Participants of the hackathons will be supported by Faculty and the National Institute of Teaching to experiment and put forward solutions, paving the way for the future.”
The department is hosting the hackathon with Faculty AI, the National Institute of Teaching (NIoT) and the AI in Schools Initiative.
Reduce teacher workload
Executive director of research at NIoT, Dr Calum Davy, said schools need to lead on the “identification of problems” and “development of solutions” for emerging AI technology to have an impact.
Generative AI resources in educational settings include tools such as ChatGPT, Google Bard, Claude and Midjourney. It is a type of AI that can generate text, images or other media.
The DfE published its official position on the use of generative AI earlier this year. It recognised its potential across the education sector to reduce workload, but said that schools must “take reasonable steps where applicable to prevent malpractice”.
In June, it launched a call for evidence to gather views from educational professionals on the risks, ethical considerations and possibilities of AI in education. The results of the call for evidence, as well as hackathon results, will be published in November this year.
Future of AI in education
The event at the end of the month forms part two of a project that will run from September 2023 to March 2024 in four phases.
Phase one was used to develop a list of around 20 uses for generative AI in education.
Phase two sees schools explore and test “use cases” - with dummy datasets and AI models - and assess those ready to be used in schools.
Phase three will involve creating a proof-of-concept generative AI tool and testing it with users, and the final phase is an analysis of the results.
The location of the hackathon and a list of attendees is yet to be confirmed.
