On November 20th, Emma Beatson and I, from the Research and Innovation team attended the 2024 School and Academies show at the NEC in Birmingham. Our aim was to look at what kinds of conversations people in the sector are having, and how much of it is about AI. Moreover, we wanted to find out how both schools and scholastic third parties – essentially vendors – were responding to AI, while also capturing any intriguing themes or noteworthy topics that emerged during the convention. In this post I’ll look at a few of the themes that were unearthed and try to weave my own reflections into the text.
The first, and maybe the most conspicuous seminar to my mind was the leveraging Al to reduce teacher workload, with Oak National Academy by Emma Searle. It was a compelling talk about how the solution she was presenting could address the very real issue of workload for teachers and other academic staff. While I genuinely think their goal an admirable one, something made me solicitous and somewhat apprehensive – they utilise an “independent moderation agent” which apparently keeps the software tool “ethical”. I quibble not at the mention of such a feature, but the lack of an explanation for how the feature pulls such a thing off. We know for example that some companies have used underpaid Kenyan workers to train their commercial tool and the story behind that is both unsettling and confounding. Therefore, in the case of Alia, the workload reducing tool by Oak National Academy – without an explanation as to how their ethical function operates, it is difficult to verify how “ethical” it actually is.
It’s also worth mentioning that the inability to articulate, unambiguously and without palaver, how a given AI orientated solution achieves its aim, was everywhere; and, I can’t help but wonder if this inability is a sector wide phenomenon. Likewise, this was often the case with the vendors at the event as well – most of the AI powered solutions that were presented, the presenters did not actually know how the AI itself works – even superficially. Not knowing how the tools work is a worry for anyone in procurement.
A ubiquitous theme throughout the convention was inclusion, and one talk titled The EdTech Paradigm Shift: Putting Pedagogy at Centre of Digital Strategy discussed that there’s a rise in children needing scribes, and that speech to text is vital for facilitating that need. It isn’t clear if this is, or is not, connected to the change made in how adolescents are actually taught to be literate. Previously children were taught literacy via a method called phonics, and this has now been supplanted by the now pervasive whole language learning. The general consensus seems to be that most people struggle to read for long periods of time, and that most students do not write unless they’re being made to. Creating or encouraging the use of tools like Mote (a speech to text software tool) seems counterintuitive as it does not encourage the actual behaviour required to become literate. I think it a real possibility that we risk losing something important, or at least make it harder to acquire essential knack and aptitude, if we adopt the maxim that less is more; it’s a pithy oxymoron that may have no place in academia. More work does not equal bad work. The danger in making what really should be an accessibility tool commonplace is that you magnetise indolence and potentially stunt growth. Needless to say, as a means of making material accessible, this tool and others like it hit the mark. But we should also put a spotlight on the possible downside that could be the outcome of such an approach. And I think this same truism extends to AI.
Lastly, a recurring and salient theme that emerged throughout the discussions at the show was the challenge of managing workloads. Closely intertwined with this issue is the question of technological strategy—deciding what technology should be kept and what should be replaced. It was made evident at the EdTech Paradigm Shift seminar that such decisions are often left unaddressed due to the absence of a knowledgeable decision maker. This gap was underscored during the aforesaid seminar, where a panel of multi-academy trusts shared their experiences with digital transformation. The resounding message from this session, and perhaps the most pivotal takeaway, was the necessity for every school to have a Chief Technology Officer (CTO)—a dedicated professional tasked with guiding critical technological decisions.