What's the future of AI in UK education?

AI can be implemented in schools, enhancing teachers' practice and freeing them to interact more with students. 

That's what English teacher Joe Pellet stresses as he shows us how artificial intelligence is helping his pupils learn at St Edmund's School in Canterbury in the south of England. Developed by CENTURY tech, the AI system learns about each child's ability and tailors the course or pathway to suit them: raising the bar for those that find it easy and offering more help to those that don't.

Today the children are learning how to use colons and semicolons. The class starts with an interactive session involving Pellet and the children around a big screen, going through some multiple answer questions. They then break off, with each child logging on to a terminal to continue their learning.

"We've got something called diagnostics, which are short tests, and that short test then talks with AI. The AI then decides what is going to be your next lesson and that's when it becomes incredibly bespoke," says Pellet.

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Twelve-year-old pupil Aren says: "I find it really helpful because last year I was really struggling in subjects like science. Now, for example, I would do some revision and I'd go on CENTURY tech to do some questions. Before we would just write in our books a lot."‌

Naomi adds: "Now we can go onto the computers and when we do it, I find it very fun.”

Priya Lakhani is the founder and CEO of Century Tech. She tells CGTN: "With that small investment of literally a couple of hours - it saves hours and hours of time in the future and it enables you to do what you signed up to do, which is spend more time teaching rather than on admin."

For private schools like this one, they can find the money but for cash-strapped state-funded schools it's much harder. A strong Internet connection is also required. The UN says 40 percent of the world's population aren't even online.

The UK's Department of Education told CGTN: "Artificial intelligence has the power to transform education. However, for that potential to be realized, we need to understand both its opportunities and risks. 

"Hundreds of teachers and tech innovators responded to our call for evidence which will shape our work, and an investment of up to £2 million ($2.53 million) in Oak National Academy (an organization providing an online classroom and resource hub in the UK) is helping us to develop tools which aim to save teachers' time so they can focus on what they do best – teaching and supporting their pupils." 

"It's about investing in education." says Lakhani . "That's where governments have to look at real term funding and ensure that we are funding education properly."

Finally, I ask Pellet whether he thinks AI will ever replace teachers. He doesn't think so, explaining: "We want to use it as a tool to enhance our teachers. We want it to enhance our children's ability to learn, to be able to learn. I don't think there's ever a way that can replace the teachers themselves. 

"Our subject knowledge is at the core of the questions that we have to ask and the questions that we have to lay down for AI to respond. At the end of the day, we're the teachers, we're the ones that know or should know what we're doing and we're the ones that should know what these children need."

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