Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans her Department has to develop guidance for educational institutions (a) using and (b) procuring AI systems.

To accompany the Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) policy paper, the department has published online materials to help educators use AI safely and effectively, developed in partnership with Chiltern Learning Trust and the Chartered College of Teaching. The materials are a toolkit for all educators, outlining the basic information that everyone working with young people should know about using AI safely, with some potential use cases, to help leaders address the risks and opportunities of AI, and how to consider AI as part of a wider digital strategy.

To help educational institutions procure safe and effective education technology (EdTech), the department wants to incentivise more evidence generation from EdTech companies by setting product quality standards and piloting how to assess products through the EdTech Evidence Board.

To ensure the safety of our children, the department announced the AI Product Safety Expectations in Education framework for technology companies, which sets out technical safeguards including prioritising child-centred design and enhanced filtering of harmful content.

The department will test an approach to quality assurance by engaging experts, such as company and sector representatives, data scientists, regulators, charities, academics and expert teachers, to assess edtech product evidence against set criteria and give judgements which could be made available to the sector.