The majority of teachers say they need more training to boost their confidence in using artificial intelligence, according to a survey exploring how it could change education.
Three-fifths (61 per cent) of teachers believe that they would feel more confident and use AI more if they were trained in how to use it effectively, a YouGov study has revealed.
The report - commissioned by international examination board Trinity College London - also found that a similar proportion (63 per cent) of teachers think that generic AI tools are too unreliable for them to be effectively used in the classroom.
And half (54 per cent) of the 1,012 teachers who took part in the study think it is unlikely that every classroom will use a personalised AI assistant.
Last year, Oak National Academy and the Department for Education were met with controversy after the government gave Oak up to £2 million in funding to build AI tools to help teachers with their workload, including developing AI teaching assistants.
The study published today comes as Ofsted and Ofqual are due to submit plans to the government on how they plan to deal with AI.
Educate students in ethics of AI, teachers say
Less than a quarter (23 per cent) of teachers say they have used AI tools in their teaching in the past term but, such has been the interest in tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, only one in five (19 per cent) now think AI shouldn’t be incorporated into the curriculum by the DfE.
When asked in what ways the DfE should incorporate AI into the curriculum, over half (54 per cent) of the teachers who took part in the study said pupils should be taught the “ethical implications” of using AI.
More than a third (38 per cent) of teachers think students should be given a foundational understanding of how AI works.
More than a quarter (27 per cent) say that AI should be integrated into maths and science classes, 16 per cent think it should be integrated into all compulsory national curriculum subjects, and 13 per cent think the schoolwork grading should be reformulated to consider the assumed use of AI by students doing out-of-class tasks.
However, only a minority of respondents (4 per cent) believe that students should have access to AI tools during exams.
Last week, Tes revealed that the country’s biggest exam board, AQA, was going to be trialling using AI in its summer exam series. It will be exploring how AI can be used to provide “quality assurance” to human marking in a trial this summer.
AQA will use data from this year’s GCSE and A-level exams to check to what extent marks given by AI match those of senior markers.
In the poll findings published today, only a third (34 per cent) think all teachers should be encouraged to use AI to mark, give feedback and grade student work.
A similar number (32 per cent) of teachers reported that, in the next five years, they expect to rely on AI to customise lesson planning and resources for individual students in the future.
At present, 10 per cent of teachers said they used AI to help produce lesson plans or resources.
AI could improve outcomes for students
More than half of the teachers who responded (54 per cent) think AI will revolutionise teaching in unforeseeable ways, the report found.
Many teachers see potential benefits, with almost half (46 per cent) believing that better use of AI in the classroom would improve educational outcomes by allowing them to spend more time working directly with students.
Only 22 per cent think AI wouldn’t improve student performance, and a fifth (21 per cent) think students should be encouraged to use AI as a homework “co-pilot”.
Around 3 in 10 (31 per cent) teachers say students should be encouraged to use AI to develop their problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
The report also found that less than a third (29 per cent) of teachers now think students should be banned from using AI in the classroom.
The study follows the DfE’s own research on AI in January, which found that teachers need guidance to help them identify and manage pupils’ use of AI and respond to cheating.
Erez Tocker, chief executive of Trinity College London, said: “Teachers’ scepticism towards generic AI tools underscores not a rejection but a call for precision and reliability. Notably, the research indicates that a quarter of teachers are already incorporating AI into their instruction, signalling a readiness for change provided that these tools meet their exacting standards.”
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