Secondary schools in England are being urged to take part in a trial to test whether ChatGPT can cut teacher workload in one of the first tests of its kind.
Interested schools can sign up from today to participate in the Education Endowment Foundation-backed trial, which will explore how using the generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool for lesson planning could reduce teachers’ working hours.
The move has been welcomed by headteachers’ leaders, but they described the choice to focus on “a single generative artificial intelligence system” as “puzzling, given the array of powerful tools available on the market”.
Rob Robson, AI lead at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), also said that it is “important to acknowledge that AI, while valuable, will not be the remedy for the current workload crisis faced by the teaching profession”.
A total of 58 schools will be randomly assigned to either the ChatGPT group or a control group as part of the evaluation, led by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER).
It will aim to test whether an accessible online guide can help teachers to make best use of ChatGPT for efficient lesson planning.
Those assigned to the delivery group will use ChatGPT in their key stage 3 science lesson and resource preparation, supported by the online ChatGPT guide, designed by consultancy Bain & Company and charity The Hg Foundation.
The control group will not use ChatGPT or any other generative AI tool in any lesson and resource preparation.
AI in schools: Can ChatGPT cut teacher workload?
In addition to making online diary entries and carrying out surveys, all participants will be asked to submit lesson plans to an independent panel of teachers, who will use them to compare and assess the quality of AI-generated lesson resources.
The trial comes after a government report said that teachers needed further guidance to help them identify and manage pupils’ use of AI.
The report highlighted a Teacher Tapp poll from November last year showing that almost half of primary and secondary teachers (42 per cent) had used generative AI in their role - an increase from 17 per cent in April 2023.
Commenting on the trial, Professor Becky Francis, chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), said: “There’s already huge anticipation around how this technology could transform teachers’ roles, but the research into its actual impact on practice is, currently, limited.
“The findings from this trial will be an important contribution to the evidence base, bringing us closer to understanding how teachers can use AI to their advantage in their classrooms.”
The test is one of the EEF’s first Teacher Choices trials, which aim to help it learn more about the impact of approaches that teachers choose to use in their classrooms.
Secondary schools can sign up to take part in this trial through the EEF website. Those that participate will receive a thank you payment for contributing to the research
