Using GenAI to enhance teaching and learning

Digital Cornerstone

Cornerstone C of E Primary in Hampshire is a Microsoft Showcase School and a partner in Hampshire EdTech Hub. An aspect of both of these roles is to explore different ways of using technology and to provide examples as case studies – particularly from a primary school perspective – to share with other staff and schools.

Generative AI

Therefore, we were interested in exploring how we could benefit from the use of Generative AI in our various roles. Following staff CPD (continuing professional development) sessions, staff discussed and agreed the purposes for using AI. There are two main agreed purposes, which are outlined in our AI policy:

1. to enhance the teaching and learning in classes across the school and improve outcomes
2. to support and reduce workload for staff across the school (Cornerstone C of E Primary School, 2024)

Research

John Hattie (2023) states that ‘It is time to focus more on the implementation effects when using technologies along with teaching methods’ (p. 408), discussing the exciting possibilities of intelligent tutoring systems to provide feedback.

A recent Education Endowment Foundation report (Stringer et al., 2021) shares the conclusion that schools should ‘consider the pedagogical rationale for how technology will improve learning. The principles of how to use technology successfully are not distinct from questions of how to teach effectively or how children learn.’

The European Commission’s publication ‘Ethical guidelines on the use of AI in teaching and learning for educators’ (2022) discusses the importance of AI being used to achieve well-defined educational goals for the benefit of the learner, and that with regard to administration and workload, AI should increase the capacity of the organisation.

Responsible use

The digital leaders at Cornerstone networked with a range of external EdTech experts and read a range of blogs and research to further their understanding of Generative AI and how it was being utilised in different settings. This was then shared with the staff team, who discussed and agreed their responsibilities to address any potential issues of using AI. These are currently summarised as follows:

• Staff should ensure that their use of AI systems treats all people fairly
• Staff should ensure that their use of AI systems is reliable and safe
• Staff should ensure that their use of AI systems is secure and respects privacy
• Staff, both individually and collectively, should ensure that their use of AI systems should empower everyone and engage people
• Staff should ensure that their use of AI systems should be transparent and understandable
• Staff must be accountable for their use of AI systems

Staff must take responsibility for any content generated by AI; while AI may do 80 per cent of the drafting, the staff member must ensure that they check the accuracy, reliability and fairness of the final content for which they are responsible.

Development and Case Studies

Staff at Cornerstone received training through staff meetings on a range of Generative AI apps (including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Suno) and were encouraged to trial a range of purposeful ways of using them. As part of this process, staff (both teaching and support staff) created case studies to share and evaluate how they have used AI and the impact that it has had on the learning of the pupils.

These were then added to our overall Digital Cornerstone Case Studies, which help staff to learn from each other and share their learning with external colleagues. The following case studies are examples from Key Stages 1 and 2 of the use of Generative AI.

Examples of Case Studies

🔗Year R Drawing Club

🔗 KS1 writing

🔗 Year 3 spelling

🔗 Year 5 writing

🔗 Year 6 mastery of maths

🔗 Supporting pupils with SEND

🔗 Summarising documents

🔗 AI policy song and podcast

🔗 School policy AI agent

Conclusion
As a school, we have seen many benefits for staff and learners in our developing use of GenAI. We will continue our learning and developments by taking part in Ofsted’s AI research project.

We want to maintain oversight of its safe, purposeful and responsible use through a balance of innovation and exploration 
with governance and accountability. 

We are achieving this through our AI policy and regular senior leadership team and staff meetings. We aim to keep producing case studies to share examples within our staff team and with the wider primary education sector.