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editing and revision assistance, formatting help, or translation support. These require disclosure and reflection on what was learned throughout the process. Red Light Activities would cover, generation of entire assignments, taking assessments, or completing work that was meant to demonstrate individual understanding. These undermine the learning objectives. Students appreciate clear guidelines, which reduces their anxiety about accidentally “cheating” and helps them develop metacognitive skills about when human thinking is irreplaceable.
the reverse is true. When AI handles routine tasks, I have more time for the uniquely human aspects of teaching: understanding a student’s struggles, facilitating rich discussions, or providing emotional support. Students, too, seem to crave that authentic human connection even more so in an AI-saturated world.
How are your teachers navigating the use of AI amongst pupils?
As with examination boards my initial instinct was to play detective, running student work through AI detection software. This approach was exhausting, often unreliable and unhelpful in building constructive relationships with students. The breakthrough came when I stopped asking “Did you use AI?” and started asking, “How did you use AI?” This shift transformed my classroom dynamic. Students began openly discussing their process, revealing they were often using AI to overcome writer’s block, generate ideas, or clarify confusing concepts, not simply to plagiarise. By making AI use transparent rather than forbidden, students are more willing to engage authentically on the topic.
Teaching AI literacy as a core skill is vital. Just as we teach students to evaluate websites for credibility, we must teach them to interact critically with AI. In my classroom, we regularly discuss AI limitations, such as its tendency to “hallucinate” or reflect biases. We practice “prompt engineering”—crafting questions that yield more useful responses—and discuss how the quality of AI output depends heavily on the quality of human input. This literacy extends to asking, “Is AI helping me to think more deeply or avoiding thinking altogether?”
Ultimately, our job as educators is not to shield students from AI but to prepare them to thrive alongside it. The students in our classrooms today will enter a workforce where AI collaboration is standard. By teaching them to use these tools thoughtfully and ethically now, we’re giving them a competitive advantage. This preparation goes beyond technical skills, emphasising critical thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence, and collaboration—uniquely human capabilities that complement AI.
June 2025
How can we better equip teachers to embrace AI and remove fears around it? Many educators feel overwhelmed by the pace of AI development. The biggest hurdle is ensuring teachers feel confident and competent. What we need is practical, hands-on training where we can experiment with AI, explore its features, and brainstorm classroom applications. Sharing best practice, focusing on AI literacy (understanding how it works and its ethical implications), and highlighting how AI can reduce workload are crucial for buy-in and ongoing support. As teachers we must also begin conversations with students about AI use in our classrooms. I have used learning scenarios with my own students to encourage them to share ideas around how they might use AI ethically and transparently to assist their learning. Involving them in the construction of agreements about how to use AI and to document how they have used it, is a great way of making them accountable as users of this technology. Teachers should also experiment with AI more often to understand its capabilities and its limitations first-hand. Collaborating with colleagues and students to develop school- wide approaches that everyone buys into is a step in the right direction. At school, I have also designed assignments that emphasise process, collaboration, and critical thinking rather than rote information regurgitation. The kind of approach already required for students undertaking an EPQ where research logs documenting the process and acknowledging how AI has been embedded, are also helpful as models to follow.
What approaches have you been using at your school to embrace the positives of AI? We have adopted a traffic light system in school which is working well in signposting what is considered to be favourable use of AI and what is not. For instance, Green Light Activities would include research assistance, brainstorming, explaining difficult concepts, generating practice problems, or helping with writer’s block. These enhance learning without replacing critical thinking. Amber Light Activities would include
Maximising the positive possibilities of AI is key because when wielded thoughtfully, the likes of ChatGPT can be a powerful ally for both teachers and students. For teachers, it’s a time-saving assistant because the administrative burden on educators is immense and AI can be a godsend for lesson planning and resource generation, for brainstorming activity ideas, drafting differentiated questions, generating quick quizzes for your class, or adapting content to specific student interests. A great example I saw recently was around how AI could be used to personalise explanations to students on topics they might be struggling with – in this case a teacher asked AI to “explain photosynthesis to a student who likes football.”
Teachers will also benefit from AI in helping to draft constructive feedback or generate initial content for lengthy report comments, which can then be personalised and adapted to fit. This frees up time for nuanced individual student needs. At my school we have also started using AI for more personalised tutoring – such as for clarifying concepts, getting step-by-step breakdowns, or exploring topics in greater depth at the students own pace. We’ve also challenged our students to use AI to generate a draft article and then critically evaluate its accuracy, bias, and persuasive techniques, fostering essential digital literacy.
Why might schools need to rethink traditional assessment methods as AI adoption grows?
I see AI as being transformational in terms of the future educational landscape. Traditional assignments often invite AI misuse because they were not designed with these tools in mind. I have had to rethink how I assess student learning, focusing more on process than product. For example, instead of a standard essay, I might ask my students to focus on research-based projects and to submit research notes, an outline, a first draft, and a reflection on their writing process. In-class discussions and collaborative projects have also become more valuable for authentic assessment.
As schools we have a duty of care as role models to establish how we can use AI positively to ensure that students are fairly assessed and are still able to benefit from tools that they will be expected to use in their future working lives. The rise of AI in education is of course not just a challenge to be managed—it’s an opportunity to enhance student learning in ways we are only just beginning to fully understand. By embracing it with curiosity rather than fear and using clear expectations as opposed to blanket prohibitions, we can help our students develop the skills they will need for a future we are still discovering together.
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