Online conference 2.30pm-6.00pm
Wednesday 15th January and Thursday 16th January 2025

Descriptions of the main themes and topics that our speakers intend to cover in their sessions are outlined below to assist you in gaining a strong overview of the conference and to help you choose the workshop sessions that best suit your needs and areas of interest:

DAY ONE

Rob Robson, AI Consultant, Association of School and College Leaders
What is the purpose of AI in your school?
Artificial intelligence has the potential to be a game-changer for education and schools. However, the current use of AI is unregulated and ad hoc. In this opening session, Rob Robson will help schools get to grips with the purpose of AI – exploring the reasons why it could be a game-changer but considering the risks we must respond to as well. Put simply, he will address what we want AI to do for us in schools and what we do not want it to do. His aim will be to help school leaders make informed decisions about the role of generative AI in education. He will consider issues such as transparency in AI use, understanding the ethical dimension in AI deployment, operational considerations, and supporting school staff via CPD. He will also address the most common risks presented by AI (and our most common fears as school leaders).

Professor Rose Luckin, Founder and CEO, Educate Ventures Research; Professor of Learner Centred Design at UCL Knowledge Lab
Creating a future-proof AI strategy
Professor Rose Luckin has spent more than 30 years developing and studying AI for education and is renowned for her research into the design and evaluation of educational technology and AI. Following on from our opening session discussing the purpose of AI in your schools, in this session Rose will discuss the wider context of AI in education and what we can expect to see in the short, medium and longer term. Having set this wider context, Rose will then advise on how schools and trusts can transform their "purpose" into a coherent and future-proof AI strategy. What questions must our AI strategy address? How do we decide our priorities? What must we avoid doing? How can we ensure we future-proof our AI strategy to enable us to thrive during the profound disruption that AI is bringing in education? And how can our strategy set us up to manage the risks, while also helping us to grasp the opportunities AI presents to raise teaching standards and drive student outcomes?

Kester Brewin, Associate Director & Communications Lead, Institute for the Future of Work
The deployment of AI: An action plan
The Institute for the Future of Work is an independent research and development charity exploring how new technologies are transforming work and working lives. In this session, Kester Brewin will set out an action plan for the deployment of AI-driven technologies in schools. Drawing on the latest research evidence on technology adoption that promotes better quality jobs, he will consider how we can plan AI adoption for our schools, bring all teachers along with us (not just the AI trail-blazers, but those who are uncertain too), what CPD and training considerations we must address, and how we can plan ahead effectively to ensure our institutions are "future-proofed". It can be said that education does not have a great track record with technology adoption (interactive whiteboards, anyone?) and Kester will discuss what we need to do to ensure new resources are used to their full potential by teaching staff and do not sit on the cloud gathering virtual dust and wasting away.

Neil Miley, Chief Executive Officer (Designate), Mercia Learning Trust, Sheffield
An effective AI policy for your school: What to include
Schools across the country are getting to grips with artificial intelligence and what it means for their operations, teaching and wider staff, and students and families. As has been acknowledged: AI brings huge opportunities but also risks. As such, the creation of an AI policy for your school and/or trust is an essential step to ensuring effective adoption of AI. But this is easier said than done. In this session, trust CEO Neil Miley will set out how his trust and the schools within it are getting to grips with these issues. He will discuss the key ingredients of an effective AI policy. Neil will ask a number of self-evaluation questions to help you ensure that your AI policy is effective. He will also touch upon how AI can be used to support the wider operational running of a school, notably for back office, non-teaching functions.

Dawn Johnson, Head of Data & MIS, Pope Francis Catholic MAT, Liverpool
Using AI to support data management, reduce workload, and drive school improvement
This session will focus on the use of AI-driven technologies to support the collection, management, analysis and use of data in school. Dawn Johnson is head of data for a multi-academy trust where she is currently working to develop a wide range of digital infrastructure to leverage the power of AI, including Power Bi, Power Apps, and wider Microsoft 365 software. The session will consider her "lessons learned" so far in this journey. Dawn will discuss practical steps for how to develop and embed an AI companion into school infrastructure to provide data-driven insights on a daily basis to school leaders and help school staff to prioritise tasks in order to drive rapid school improvement. Dawn believes this is an area of AI that is not yet fully understood by many schools and she will discuss how we can use AI to drive school improvement while reducing workload. She will consider practical issues such as GDPR compliance and what things to avoid when thinking about how AI can support data management.

DAY TWO

Julie Carson, Director of Education, Woodland Academy Trust
A 10-point framework for AI in schools
Earlier this year, a team of 23 multi-academy trusts published a pathfinding report setting out a 10-point guidance framework for those leading AI in schools and offering a set of 29 research-based yet inherently practical recommendations for school leaders. In this session, Julie Carson, Director of Education at Woodland Academy Trust – one of the 23 MATs – will walk us through the 10-point framework and a number of the recommendations, offering practical examples from the 23 MATs of what these elements look like in practice and any "lessons learned". Themes during this session will include how to ensure a strategic approach to AI, staff CPD, how to develop AI literacy, the implications for curriculum and assessment and more. Julie will also touch upon managing risks, including safeguarding,  data and security, and ethical considerations.

Chris Leek, Digital Lead, Three Spires Trust, Staffordshire; and Aimee Williams, Director of School Improvement, Three Spires Trust & Practitioner for AI in Education
Prompt engineering & ethical considerations when using AI
This session will cover two key aspects of AI in teaching and lesson planning: prompt engineering and ethical considerations. Over the past year, the Three Spires Trust has been exploring AI integration through small-scale trials and teacher feedback, refining their approach to maximize impact. In the first part, we’ll dive into how to craft effective, clear prompts to get the most out of AI tools, offering practical tips and best practices for teaching staff. The session will highlight some of the most successful tools trialled by the trust’s teachers. The second part will focus on critical ethical issues, including responsible AI use, privacy concerns, bias, and environmental impact. Attendees will learn how to approach AI in a way that is ethical, responsible, and equitable in the classroom.

Gemma Clark, Author, AI in the Primary Classroom & Primary School Teacher
AI in the classroom: Tips, ideas & insights
Experienced teacher Gemma Clark, the author of Artificial Intelligence in the Primary Classroom, will offer ideas and tips for how teachers can use AI in their lesson-planning and resource-creation in order to save time, reduce workload, and boost creativity. Gemma will discuss in particular how AI can help teachers to personalise the curriculum in their lessons, providing extra challenge for pupils. Gemma's session will also tackle some of the risks of AI use, including issues of bias and diversity, and ideas for how we can teach pupils to use AI responsibly. The session will ultimately offer a range of practical strategies, activities, and useful tips and tricks that will save teachers time and energy – and while based in her experience of the primary classroom, many of the ideas will also be of use to secondary colleagues.

Ben Merritt, Head of Modern Foreign Languages, King Ecgbert School, Sheffield, part of Mercia Learning Trust
Navigating the AI marketplace & creating AI lesson resources
Teacher Ben Merritt will draw on his experience of using AI to advise on how we can navigate the increasingly daunting AI marketplace. He will recommend a number of AI products and resources that he has tried and tested, including top tips and advice. And he will talk about general good practice for embedding AI into your lesson-planning and resource creation no matter which AI tool you have chosen to use. His session will touch upon dos and don'ts for using AI resources too, including how to handle issues of diversity and accuracy. Specific resources Ben uses include ChatGPT, ChatPDF, Microsoft 365 PlugIns, song-creation AI tools, photo editing tools, and teaching-specific AI sites.

Martyn Ray, Lead Practitioner of Science, Cornwallis Academy, Maidstone, part of the Future Schools Trust
Where AI can make a difference: Workload, SEND, data, assessment…
As the adoption of AI technologies and practices in school gathers pace, it will become vital that all staff are supported to make the most of these new technologies. Teacher Martyn Ray will discuss his experiences of using AI over the past year, including the variety of ways that teachers can take advantage of AI technology to save time and improve outcomes. The session will cover the potential of AI to support the assessment of student work, including the results of a department-wide trial at Martyn's school into AI's ability to mark mock examinations. Martyn will also cover a simple introduction of AI uses for staff who are unfamiliar or unsure about the technology, including the importance of getting your AI prompts right and the limitations of AI that we must be aware of. He will consider how AI can transform lesson-planning and resource creation for students with SEND. And he will explain how he uses AI to help analyse student data to aid lesson-planning and support student progress. Martyn uses GoogleGemini and ChatGPT in particular and will discuss his "lessons learned" with these platforms.