AI tools to help with teachers' marking

The government has set aside £1 million for 16 developers to create AI tools which will help teachers with marking and giving students personalised feedback, leaving more time for them to deliver their lessons.

AI is to play a big role in the government’s Plan for Change as it will be used to drive growth and reupholster public services.

The AI tools will be individually customised to a specific age and subject, helping teachers with everything from marketing written work to providing feedback on geography diagrams. These developers estimate that some tools could reduce time on formative assessments by up to 50 per cent, meaning more time for teachers to inspire children to learn and engage in face-to-face teaching.

Technology secretary, Peter Kyle, said: “AI has the power to transform education by helping teachers focus on what they do best — teaching. This marks a real shift in how we use technology to improve lives and unlock the near-boundless potential of AI for our classrooms.

“Through this approach, we’re not only improving education but also ensuring that our public sector services are world-class, tackling inefficiencies, cutting down backlogs, and making AI-driven progress a cornerstone of our Plan for Change.”

These 16 UK innovators, including start-ups and universities, will develop cutting-edge AI tools that will drastically reduce the time teachers spend marking homework and assessments, whether its geography chats, coding exercises, or written essays.

A survey from TeacherTapp shows that almost half of teachers are already using AI to help with their work, though these tools are not specifically trained to the English schools curriculum, and are not accurate enough to full take the brunt of teachers’ marking and administration. Training AI tools on specific curriculum and pupil data would increase feedback accuracy up to 92 per cent, up from 67 per cent without no targeted data. This gives teachers confidence that the tools are safe and reliable for classroom use.

With the prototype set to be ready by April 2025, teachers can be confident about its accuracy as it will use an unprecedented AI store of data, which has a £3 million investment backing from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. This technology will pool and encrypt curriculum guidance, lesson plans and anonymised pupil work which will then be used to train the AI tools to generate accurate marking feedback.

Bridget Phillipson, secretary state for education, said: “Through our Plan for Change, we are determined to drive high and rising standards across schools so we can break down the barriers to opportunity. Giving every child a cutting-edge school experience is a crucial part of our mission.

“High quality teaching is the single biggest driver of high standards in schools and through harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence we can get teachers at the front of classrooms doing what they do best — teaching”