11/14/2025 10:55:29 AM | less than a minute read

Gen AI in Education

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Eleanor Reilly

Solicitor

Get in touch

Eleanor Reilly

Solicitor

Recently, I attended the Cambridge Generative AI in Education Conference 2025, which was about shaping the future of learning through Generative AI. As is so often the case with attending CPD events (as may be the intention), one ends up with more questions than answers. Then, in practice, back in real life, there is so little opportunity to do things differently, even if they could be done better, with greater insight or more co-ordination.

The recent survey by the British Council shows that this individual experience is also the collective experience. There's no escaping, however. School and College leadership teams have a lot of work to do to arrive at a clear position and AI policy for use in their own setting, and to involve everybody, staff, parents, and the student body appropriately. AI is causing a radical rethink, and young people will not see the benefit in a leadership vacuum.

The British Council put questions to 1,000 UK secondary teachers on how the rise of AI and digital culture is impacting the classroom. Amy Lightfoot, academic director for English and school education at the British Council, said: “AI and digital culture are fundamentally reshaping how young people communicate and learn. We commissioned this survey to get a better understanding of what teachers are experiencing on the ground, not just the challenges but the opportunities they’re seeing in classrooms as digital learning and AI develop. “The sheer scale of changes teachers are having to make is striking.” Ms Lightfoot added that the survey had presented a “significantly mixed picture in terms of the attitudes towards AI”.

www.tes.com/...