Brit teachers are getting AI sidekicks to help with marking and lesson plans The UK government is set to equip teachers with AI tools to help them "mark and plan lessons." The project, which has £4 million of government investment behind it, will feed government documents – including curriculum guidance, lesson plans, and anonymized pupil assessments – into AI models, which will then spit out "accurate …
Some of my kids' friends "do their homework" by typing the questions into ChatGPT and then copying and pasting the result. They don't even read it to see if it makes any kind of sense.
So now we will end up with the situation where the AI is not only doing the homework, but marking it as well.
I wonder if it will be smart enough to give itself an A+.
That was precisely my thought. . . since the kids will be using ChatGPT to do their busy. . . .er. . . homework, it's only fair that AI gets to grade it.
By the way, according to the invaluable Pivot to AI, this whole meshugge scheme was concocted by the Tony Blair Institute.
As the estimable David Gerard pus it "The only bright spot is that the new educational AI model doesn’t exist yet and there’s plenty of time for the whole project to go sideways before launch."
I couldn't agree more.
A couple of friends have run university level business courses and this is common there too. One is quite pragmatic about it - English is not the first language for many of them, and AI is good at generating bland business-speak. But the answer still has to be correct and show an understanding of the key points - that’s what you’re assessing - which is not something you get from just typing in the question.
He’s also used AI to create the course slides based on a
Course outline and notes he fed in, and had very good feedback from the department supervisor on the results.
So I’m marginally less sceptical on this proposal than I normally would be. If teachers are creating their own material in the form slides, printouts etc then this could certainly save them time. How applicable this is at primary school, or for all courses I don’t know.
Honestly, unless the UK government is incredibly more important than the USG, 4 million isn't going to buy anything but a nice car for some consultants.
That being said, an AI marking papers and writing lesson plans sounds like a disaster. Good thing they won't be able to afford even a half-assed attempt.
This is clearly bullshit in several senses. Firstly, it's government AI-washing an existing scheme or bucket of money in the hope of gaining favourable PR - and shame on them pulling that kind of fuckwit stunt. Secondly if this money goes further than making a few well-off multinationals even more well-off I'll be astounded. And thirdly if it does produce any kind of AI assistance it will do more harm than good, for reasons we all know.
Thankfully, in my experience as a parent and school governor, headteachers and teachers tend to be fairly sane when it comes to seeing through nonsense and prefer an evidence-based approach to adopting planning schemes rather than jumping on the shiny bandwagon.
> ... headteachers and teachers tend to be fairly sane when it comes to seeing through nonsense ...
I think you misinterepreted their reactions.
What you were actually experiencing was that teachers don't like being told what to do, and that fact that it's (too often) government bullshit is just coincidence.
So I presume all kids do homework on a pc? err no
I presume all remaining homework is in a well presented and easily scanned form? err no
I presume once scanned (taking three times as long as it would have taken to mark it by hand in the first place) the handwriting and diagrams in the scans are then decipherable by AI into something resembling valid language? No again
So finally the teacher has to go through the scans manually, mark them digitally and presto! an AI marked script ... well, as soon as the original script has had the marks and corrections transcribed onto it
Perhaps a visit to an actual classroom may be useful? Or perhaps all teaching should be tested using multi-guess technologies which may be total rubbish but can be marked easily using existing technologies ... I mean new AI technology
When I was involved with staff training &c I always used to ask for detailed examples of classroom use of proposed revolutionary technologies. I then used to try and break down the steps in the use of the technology and in make a list of who was doing what and how long each component would be likely to take.
You would be surprised how many proposers of revolutionary technology adoption saw no problem with something taking 'only 5 minutes per student per week'. I used to point out that I saw 220 students in a week and 220*5 = 1100 minutes or 18+ hours extra time. And then I used to ask: 'What do I stop doing so as to be able to find that time?'.
Now I am all for sharing teaching resources and also for standardising lesson plans to some extent. There might be a role for machine assisted assessment of base skills in various subjects. We shall see what all of this involves. But I am not holding my breath.
Fun thing to do: ask your local elected representative the question 'What actually is an educational standard?'
Icon: semi-retired
>Here (not the UK) the state issues all kids with iPads so yes, they do homework on a "pc".
Same here (in UK) at state maths 6th form - all work done on provided iPad (with a pen to boot) - in class they tend to work on large whiteboards or write on their desks with marker pens. The kids mark each others work, use their phones in class and various other horrors. Outperforms pretty much every school in the UK except the other maths specialist schools which it competes with. Even worse for the right-wing nutters, it (like all the specialist maths schools) are based on the Russian, Moscow State School 57 model.
I look forward to the lessons about the Great Marmot Invasion of 1432 and glorious Queen Fuhgwahd, the first queen of Britain, who played such a crucial role in getting Wales to the Moon first and devolving Narnia's government.
Love it.
Narnian House of Commons with Aslan facing off against Jadis. Bit like Sir Keir v Suella. Standing orders forbid turning members into stone, presumably. ;)
And based on The Black Adder, Richard III was a competent but extremely unlucky military leader who probably had nothing to do with princes' deaths... oh that probably is (non-Tudor) history. :)
....especially if your goal is to up teachers' effective workload while deskilling them to role of classroom monitors.
Although AI models appear smart they're really like owning a large shelf of old-school encyclopedias, useful knowledge stores but lacking any form of judgment. (Obviously they're improving but as we're learning the hard way big AI models are incredibly expensive to build and run. They're also prone to delusions if they're allowed to feed on unmoderated data.)
Notice how the stock picture of 'teacher' is still a young lady, a very traditional role for minding younger children. This doesn't really reflect the reality of teaching but it does underscore the systematic weakness in educational policy. Its not "womens' work", its a profession and a rather skilled one at that -- at all levels. Neglect it at your peril!
for me the fact that strawberry also has three Rs really says it all. You would think a blueberry, blackberry or gooseberry could be pressed into service or in desperation a cherry... obviously the model cannot grok Peano or count to three.
Spelling reformers like the decidedly peculiar G B Shaw might have wanted "rarsebery" or some such but I am not too sure that any self respecting LLM would want to be seen in company with that crowd. :)
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