£1 Million Investment In AI Tools To Enhance Teaching
14-Mar-2025
The UK government has made a groundbreaking move to integrate artificial intelligence into the classroom, setting the stage for a future where technology enhances teaching rather than replaces it. As part of the government's ambitious Plan for Change, £1 million has been awarded to 16 innovative edtech companies to develop AI tools that assist teachers with marking and providing personalised feedback. This initiative is expected to revolutionise the teaching landscape by freeing up valuable teacher time, improving feedback accuracy, and raising educational standards nationwide.
AI: Powering the Future of Education
Marking and feedback are essential components of the learning process, yet they remain some of the most time-consuming tasks for teachers. Evidence suggests that high-quality feedback significantly improves pupil performance, but the workload associated with assessments often limits the time teachers can dedicate to lesson planning and direct student engagement.
With AI-driven solutions, this bottleneck is set to be alleviated. The newly funded AI tools will help with marking handwritten English and modern language work, assessing geography diagrams, and identifying mathematical errors in student assignments. Some of these tools could reduce the time spent on formative assessments by up to 50%, allowing teachers to dedicate more energy to what they do best—teaching and inspiring students.
A Government-Led Push for AI in Education
This initiative follows the Prime Minister’s recent commitment to harnessing AI’s full potential to drive national progress. By 2025, prototype AI tools will be operational, trained on a pioneering AI content store—a £3 million government-backed database of curriculum guidance, anonymised student work, and lesson plans. This ensures that AI tools align with national education standards, providing teachers with accurate, reliable, and curriculum-specific assistance.
According to Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education:
“High-quality teaching is the single biggest driver of high standards in schools, and through harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence, we can get teachers at the front of classrooms doing what they do best—teaching.”
Technology Secretary Peter Kyle echoed this sentiment, emphasising how AI can transform education by streamlining administrative burdens and unlocking the boundless potential of AI-driven learning tools.
AI in the Classroom
Recent surveys indicate that nearly 50% of teachers already use AI in some form. However, many existing tools lack training on the specific educational frameworks used in England, making them less effective for grading and feedback. The new government-funded AI tools, trained on high-quality datasets, are expected to boost accuracy rates to 92%—a significant improvement from the 67% accuracy of general AI models.
One of the pioneering companies benefiting from this funding is Summatic, co-founded by Daniel Appleby. The company is developing an AI tool to provide real-time feedback for maths students aged 16-19, assessing weaknesses and generating unlimited tailored practice questions to drive up student performance.
Appleby stated:
“This funding marks a significant milestone in our mission to use AI-enabled technology to deliver more equitable learning outcomes for students across the United Kingdom while alleviating the marking and admin burden faced by teachers.”
YUNESG’s Commitment to AI-Driven Education
At YUNESG, we firmly believe in the power of AI to transform education and numerous other industries. Our own AI-driven solution, DeepGrade, has already helped teachers save countless hours on grading, allowing them to focus on what truly matters, student engagement and classroom excellence.
As the UK government continues its push towards embedding AI into the fabric of society, initiatives like this set the stage for a more efficient, high-performing, and accessible education system. The fusion of teacher expertise and AI efficiency represents the next step in breaking down barriers to opportunity and ensuring that every student receives the best possible education.
Stay tuned to YUNESG’s blog for more insights on AI’s impact across industries.