GovWire

In response to the increasing prevalence of AI-powered tools in education, the Department for Education (DfE) partnered with the Responsible Technology Adoption Unit (RTA) within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to better understand parent and pupil attitudes towards the use of AI in education. This research also explored attitudes towards the use of pupil data for optimising AI-powered educational tools.

Thinks Insight & Strategy conducted a rapid programme of deliberative research with 108 parents and pupils across three locations in England in a mix of face-to-face and online sessions.

What were the key findings?

• While awareness of AI as a hot topic was high among both parents and pupils, understanding did not run deep. As a result, views on the use of AI in education were initially sceptical, though there was an openness to learning more.

• Both parents and pupils could see that there were clear opportunities for the use of AI in education to support teachers, but there was some hesitation around pupils engaging with AI tools directly.

• By the end of the sessions, parents and pupils could understand the advantages of using pupil work and data to optimise AI tools. They were more comfortable with this when data was anonymised or pseudonymised and they identified a set of clear rules for acceptable data sharing.

• Opinions on the use of AI tools in education are not yet fixed: parents and pupils views of and trust in AI tools fluctuated throughout the sessions, as they reacted to new information and diverging opinions.

Next steps

This report forms part of a wider programme of collaboration between DSIT and DfE. The two departments are working together on a pilot data store that will make relevant documents machine readable so AI tools for teachers can be trained on them. You can read more about the work in the press notice for the programme of collaboration.