Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether approval was given by the Board of Oak National Academy before training and deploying its AI model Aila.

Aila is Oak National Academy’s optional artificial intelligence lesson assistant and teachers who choose to use it can create bespoke lesson resources and save time.

Aila does not train or fine-tune a model and Oak has opted out of its inputs for use by the underlying model provider for training.

As an arm’s-length body, Oak is responsible for the development and operation of its products, including Aila, with oversight from its board. Officials at the department worked with Oak as part of assurance processes during its development.

Aila was developed to support teachers with lesson planning and draws on Oak’s curriculum resources. Oak is responsible for the content it makes available to teachers, including through Aila, and the use of this platform. This is governed by Oak’s terms and conditions, available at: https://www.thenational.academy/legal/terms-and-conditions.