DfE’s new £4 million AI commitment – what will it mean in practice?

Schools’ Minister Stephen Morgan’s announcement on the 28th of August committed his department to a pioneering role in the use of government held data to enhance the use of AI by public sector organisations placing schools front and centre in the drive to implement safe and trustworthy AI tools.

But with no funding actually directed towards schools what does this mean in practice? 

Here are some key points education businesses will want to be aware of.

The £4m commitment – what we know so far…

Divided into two segments, £3m will fund the development of systems and processes that provide access to a DfE supported content store.

DfE states that the content store will pool together government documents including curriculum guidance, lesson plans and anonymised pupil assessments. 

Content will be accessible to AI capable companies to train their tools so they generate accurate, high-quality content, such as, tailored, creative lesson plans and workbooks, which can be reliably used in schools.

DfE is collaborating with the Open University and in doing so securing access to its substantial education resources. There is no reference to Oak National Academy supporting the project – that organisation already having received £2m in AI development funding

The second segment is a commitment to spend £1m supporting implementation activities encouraging companies to make use of the datastore amongst those who bring forward the best ideas to put the data into practice to reduce teacher workload. Each supported business will be expected to build an AI tool to help teachers specifically with feedback and marking by March 2025. 

Presumably DfE will look to have a spread of development activities addressing the different requirements of primary, secondary, specialist subject and the specific needs of SEN.

Applications to secure a share of the £1m fund opened last month. It should be assumed that participation in that competition will not be the only basis upon which access will be granted to the content store and all EdTech businesses with a focus on Early Years through to Secondary education will have an interest in the outcome of this initiative.

It will be interesting to see what the terms and conditions for grant award will require from recipients and how benefits realised from that funding will be expected to play out in the education sector - hard pressed to maintain existing resource budgets under current financial constraints and with the importance of training in the use of new sophisticated tools not to be overlooked.

How will schools respond to this initiative?

Evidence gathering, completed last year by DfE suggests that many in the education sector remain sceptical about the value of AI tools. 

A policy statement made during the last Conservative administration still appears on the DfE website and will undoubtedly influence the future direction of travel.

A potential concern will be whether functionality created can take into account the existing valued resources of schools that have developed their own curriculum content – notably multi-academy trusts that have been able to develop their own style of delivering subject matter. So, rather like the enterprise version of Co-Pilot will there be integration of an organisations own content with the open content provided through this initiative?

What happens next?

Full details of how this initiative will work in practice were announced on 9th September. There is a relatively short application window.

There may be benefit in collaboration between business interests to take maximum advantage of the opportunity.

Within Freeths we will follow this process closely and provide any useful observations we can make on both the process and what this initiative could mean for the longer term.