Artificial intelligence has the power to transform teachers’
day-to-day lives, the Education Secretary will say in a speech
tomorrow (Wednesday 29 March).
AI technology offers many cutting edge opportunities and some
schools are already leveraging its potential, with others eager
to learn and understand its full capability to help teach the
lessons of tomorrow
Speaking at the bett show in London, will set out to the
education and technology sector the great potential of AI and
call on them to work together, with Government, to maximise that
potential and manage the risks.
The Education Secretary’s speech coincides with the publication
of statement from the Department for Education, setting out
opportunities and risks that come with AI for education.
The Education Secretary is expected to say:
“AI will have the power to transform a teacher’s day-to-day work.
We’ve seen people using it to write lesson plans, and some
interesting experiments around marking too.
“Can it do those things now, to the standard we need? No. Should
the time it saves ever come at the cost of the quality produced
by a skilled teacher? Absolutely not.
“But could we get to a point where the tasks that really drain
teachers’ time are significantly reduced? I think we will.
“Getting to that point is a journey we in this room are
going to have to go on together – and just as we’ve responded to
other innovations like the calculator, we’ll use it to deliver
better outcomes for students.”
The Department is also announcing further support to ensure
schools have a safe, secure and reliable foundation in place
before they can consider using more powerful technology.
Additions to the Department's digital and technology standards,
covering cloud technology, servers and storage, and filtering and
monitoring, will help schools save money and create secure
learning environments.
Support also includes a new digital service to help senior
leaders with their technology planning.
The tool will benchmark their technology against digital
standards, suggest areas of improvement and provide actionable
steps and self-serve resources to implement these
recommendations.
The service will be piloted in partnership with schools in
Blackpool and Portsmouth in September 2023, both Priority
Education Investment Areas, before being rolled out across the
country.
These new announcements continue to deliver on commitments the
government made in the Schools White Paper in Spring 2022 to ‘fix
the basics’ in school technology, building on progress towards
ensuring all schools have a high-speed broadband internet
connection by 2025 and providing targeted classroom connectivity
upgrades.
ENDS
Notes to editors
The Digital and Technology
standards
