UK Government unveils £4m AI Project to slash teachers' workload
04 September 2024
A new initiative has been launched to help teachers reduce teachers' workload by increasing the efficiency of lesson planning and marking homework.
The project, backed by £4 million of government investment, will pool government documents including curriculum guidance, lesson plans and anonymised pupil assessments which will then be used by AI companies to train their tools to generate accurate, high-quality content.
The content, such as tailored, creative lesson plans and workbooks, can then be reliably used in schools.
The content store is targeted at technology companies specialising in education to build tools that will help teachers:
• mark work
• create teaching materials for use in the classroom
• assist with routine school admin
It comes as new research shows parents want teachers to use generative AI to have more time to help children in the classroom with face-to-face teaching – supporting the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity.
However, teachers and AI developers are clear that better data is needed to make these technologies work properly, which this project looks to help with.
Science Secretary Peter Kyle said: “We know teachers work tirelessly to go above and beyond for their students.
“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.
“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.
Minister for Early Education Stephen Morgan said: “We are determined to break down the barriers to opportunity to ensure every child can get the best possible education – and that includes access to the best tech innovations for all.
“Artificial intelligence, when made safe and reliable, represents an exciting opportunity to give our school leaders and teachers a helping hand with classroom life.
“Today’s world-leading announcement marks a huge step forward for AI in the classroom. This investment will allow us to safely harness the power of tech to make it work for our hard-working teachers, easing the pressures and workload burdens we know are facing the profession and freeing up time, allowing them to focus on face-to-face teaching.”
The content store, backed by £3 million, is a first-of-its-kind approach to processing government data for AI, as the UK government forges ahead with using technology to transform public services and improve people’s lives across the country.
It includes a partnership with the Open University, which will share learning resources as part of the project.
This follows Department for Education tests, which show that 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.
Minister Morgan announced the project during a speech to international education ministers at the Global Education Innovation Summit (GEIS) in Seoul, Republic of Korea.
The three-day event, on the theme of ‘classroom revolution led by teachers with AI’ will see the launch of the Global Education and Innovation Alliance, of which the UK will be one of the founding members.
He told the delegation the world-leading initiative will mark the first government-approved store of high-quality education material optimised for AI product development and will stimulate the production of safe, legally compliant, evidence-based tools, relevant to our teachers’ needs.
To encourage AI companies to make use of the data store, a share of an additional £1 million will be awarded to companies who bring forward the best ideas to put the data into practice, reducing teacher workload.
Each winner will build an AI tool to help teachers with feedback and marking by March 2025. Applications open on 9 September.
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 that set out how teaching should work in England.
The Department for Education is also committing to publishing a safety framework on AI products for education, due later this year. Minister Morgan will meet education technology companies before setting out clear expectations for the safety of AI products for education.
Professor Ian Pickup, Pro Vice Chancellor, Students, at The Open University, said: “We’re excited to be a founding strategic partner in this initiative alongside DfE. Since our founding in 1969, we have remained at the forefront of innovation in education.
“As part of this mission, we have provided free, open-access materials via OpenLearn since 2006, and see the deployment of AI as a means through which even more learners can benefit from the transformative power of education.
“By making content accessible to new educational technology tools, we foresee a future where learning materials can be best matched to personal needs, where learning tasks can be pitched at the right level for student success, and where students can progress at a pace that is right for them.”