A new government backed project will bring teachers and tech companies together to develop and use trustworthy AI tools that can help mark pupil’s work and save teachers time.

The project, funded by £4 million of government investment, will pool education documents including curriculum guidance, lesson plans and anonymised pupil assessments into a ‘content store’, which will be used by AI companies to train tools to generate accurate, high-quality teaching materials, like creative lesson plans and workbooks.

This content store will be targeted at technology companies specialising in building educational tools to help teachers mark work, create materials for the classroom, and assist with routine school admin. 

The content store, backed by £3 million, has been described as a first-of-its kind approach to processing government data for AI, and includes a partnership with the Open University, which is sharing learning resources to be drawn on as part of the initiative.

Ian Cunningham, chief technical officer of TeachMate, which makes AI tools to help teachers, said: “The AI education store has the potential to enable us and other developers to produce highly accurate tools for the sector in a much more efficient way, reducing cost, compute and the time it takes us to bring new products to market.” 

New research from the Department of Education shows that providing generative AI models with this kind of data can increase accuracy to 92%, up from 67% when no targeted data was provided to a large language model.

To encourage AI companies to make use of the datastore, an additional £1 million will be awarded between those who bring forward the best ideas for putting the data into practice and reducing teacher workload. Each winner will build an AI tool to help teachers specifically with pupil feedback and marking by March 2025, with applications opening on 9 September.

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Almost half of teachers are already using AI to help with their work, according to a survey from TeacherTapp, but current AI tools are not specifically trained on the documents setting out how teaching should work.

New research shows parents want teachers to use genAI to give them more time helping children with face-to-face teaching, however, teachers and AI developers are clear better data is needed to make these technologies work properly, which this project looks to help with.

“We know teachers work tirelessly to go above and beyond for their students. By making AI work for them, this project aims to ease admin burdens and help them deliver creative and inspiring lessons every day, while reducing time pressures they face,” science secretary Peter Kyle said. 

“This is the first of many projects that will transform how we see and use public sector data. We will put the information we hold to work, using it in a safe and responsible way to reduce waiting lists, cut backlogs and improve outcomes for citizens across the country.”