Bullying, Cheating And The Widening Gap: A Teacher's Struggles With AI In The Classroom

AI in the classroom (Illustration by Tracy Worrall)

Imagine stepping into a classroom every day, surrounded by 30 teenagers, each with their own unique personalities, views, opinions, difficulties and hormones. Some haven’t had breakfast, some have argued with parents or friends, and some might have been up until the early hours of the morning scrolling through TikTok or YouTube reels.

Teaching was already a tough job – and one made more complex by the Covid pandemic – but the advent of AI is making huge new demands. Teachers must simultaneously learn how to best use it for themselves and prepare pupils for this new reality.

AI is already being used by teachers across the country to save time, plan better lessons, bring learning alive through videos or podcasts, reduce time spent on admin tasks and provide detailed, individual feedback to pupils.

But in the last month I have had to deal with multiple instances of AI being used to bully other pupils, produce images that are offensive, cheat at homework, answer maths questions, write English speeches and even settle debates about who would win in a fight between a shark and a crocodile.

The good, the bad and the trivial are here to stay – and teachers are being left to navigate this world largely alone, muddling through as best we can. We need guidance, training and support in how to use AI with pupils safely. But when each day we are having to plan and teach five lessons, attend a whole-staff meeting, run after-school intervention, mark a set of exams and call parents, time is limited.

I fear we will not spend the necessary time getting the ‘prompt’ right. Adding in the use of an AI platform will create the kind of uncertainty most teachers would be reluctant to risk. And yet we cannot afford to sit still. We must educate pupils and use it fluently ourselves to show pupils how it can be done well. That means experimenting with the technology and making mistakes – because if we don’t know the pitfalls and errors that it makes, how can we educate pupils on them?

I have spent many hours listening to podcasts, reading books, designing a curriculum for pupils in school and training colleagues on the safe use of AI. Most of all, I have experimented with many platforms to give pupils the most personalised educational experience possible.

I have had to deal with multiple instances of AI being used to bully other pupils, cheat at homework, answer maths questions

There are basic practical considerations we must look at. If staff are running pupils’ work through an LLM (large language model) to support their marking, we will need schools to add intellectual property clauses to their policies. Pupils under 13 are not legally allowed to access any LLM online. If I wanted to add in a curriculum where pupils needed to use Copilot or Gemini to really get to grips with the concepts and how to use it safely, I can’t until they get to year 9. That means we’re missing a key learning stage from year 7, where many pupils get their first smartphones and will begin to have unsupervised access to these platforms. If parents aren’t teaching them how to use it, teachers could. But the legislation, albeit there to protect, may be hindering schools that are being proactive from supporting the education of LLM use at a younger age.

What do we do about coursework, in an age where pupils will be using LLMs to write it all, and it is difficult to check whether it is their work at all? There are currently multiple AI checking platforms that can be used, however they can be unreliable, produce false reports and, more to the point, these are very expensive. A central platform for all educational institutions to have access to would be the way forward here. We need to reduce the cost of all this technology for schools, teachers and students.

There is a risk that the attainment gap between pupils from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds will widen even more in the coming years. A year ago, I attended an AI conference at a private school. Immediately I realised that as someone who works in a state-run school, in a fairly deprived part of Essex, we were 18 months behind our colleagues at fee-paying schools and work was needed to catch up. We had no school policy, no staff training and no pupil guidance on how to use it.

Pupils from a privileged background have access to a laptop or an iPad at home and potentially a ChatGPT subscription too. This is now their own private tutor, which – when used well – can enhance their learning from home. These luxuries are a far cry from the circumstances of pupils in deprived schools, where some cannot afford breakfast.

Although the pandemic caused everyone to move online, five years on there are many pupils across the country who still do not have the technology to access online platforms – they might have a phone but studying with a laptop or tablet is far preferable. 

Now we are moving into an age where being able to harness this technology effectively will not only be integral to their studies but vital for their future careers. Artificial intelligence will impact almost all areas of our lives, and for teenagers trying to make sense of the world this is a confusing time. Teachers cannot be left alone to muddle through.

We need a clear national strategy for AI across all schools. We need a dedicated person in each school or multi-academy trust who can monitor, drive and train staff. We need investment in infrastructure that will bring technological devices for all pupils, fast, reliable and cheap broadband for everyone, and investment in platforms for teachers/educators so we aren’t paying for the subscriptions to support pupils’ learning from our own pockets.

We need a national curriculum on what to teach pupils about AI from age five through to 16. We need regular updates as the technology changes. And we need all of this now, to stop the gap widening between disadvantaged and advantaged pupils and to stop the UK from falling behind other countries where much of this is beginning to take shape.

Kyle Parsad is head of maths at The James Hornsby School in Basildon

Related

Gen Z Labour MP Says Social Media Ban Will "Create More Problems" For Young People

By Zoe Crowther

15 Jun