Stephen Morgan – 2024 Speech at the Global Education and Innovation Summit in the Republic of Korea

The speech made by Stephen Morgan, the Education Minister, on 28 August 2024.

Thank you, Deputy Prime Minister Lee. I’m delighted to be speaking here today.

This is my first visit to the Republic of Korea and I am glad to be developing our Global Strategic Partnership – the mutual respect, shared values and commitment to global cooperation at the heart of that Accord is evident in this room today. I’ve been so impressed by your welcome, and the exciting discussions I’ve had already on technology in education.

It’s incredible to me how far things have come since I was at school. Growing up in the 1980s, all we had was one computer in the corner of the classroom.  At my secondary school we had dial-up internet, with those distinct sounds the computer would make to tell you it was ‘going online.’ That same school now offers 3D printers and CAD design software for pupils’ projects. They are working to give every child access to a digital device, so they can extend learning beyond the classroom – ways to learn keep expanding – with the development of new hardware and software. We have to keep pace, so that our children can get the most out of their education.

The new UK government wants to learn from other nations’ approaches to Artificial Intelligence, as well as share our thinking. Optimising AI in education will support our mission to spread opportunity to every child in our country. AI has lots of applications. There’s so much excitement about how it’s already transforming many aspects of our lives. But I think the best reason to be excited is the reason we’re here today.

AI is not just about streamlining transactions or optimising chatbots. AI has the power to enhance education – the best thing a society can give its children. If we can enable it, AI will add value to young people’s futures.

Teachers are, of course, the most important part of a successful education system. But their job now involves much more than teaching a room of children: everything from developing lesson plans to marking homework and we are excited by the ways AI could reduce that load. It is capable of assessing pupils’ progress, allowing teachers to tailor lessons to the needs of particular classes. Its high-quality feedback on an individual’s work could boost their learning. It could lighten the workload and free-up teachers to focus on teaching.

Of course, we can only make these gains if schools are ready for these new digital tools. That means ensuring all their technology meets our digital and technology standards for schools. And equipping every single one with a fast, stable and secure internet connection.

And here I want to pay tribute to the Republic of Korea, for having achieved near 100% connectivity and device access in your schools. We want to replicate your success to ready our own classrooms for the future. Our Connect the Classroom programme has already provided over £200 million of upgrades to over 3,000 schools, allowing over 1 million pupils to get online safe and securely. Expanding digital access is critical to breaking down the barriers to opportunity that hold children back. It will deliver better life chances for all our children. I look forward to working with our schools once they’re back from the summer, to upgrade even more classroom internet connections.

But let’s step back from the exciting big picture for a moment. The perspective of parents whose children will use AI at school is really important. We have listened to parents and pupils around the UK to understand how they feel. Naturally there were concerns about safety. And about over-reliance on something that gathers data, but does not possess knowledge. But there was also agreement that AI could positively support teachers with their work. This feedback is at the heart of our approach to AI in education. We want to kick-start the development of high-quality, teacher-facing tools to assist in the classroom and beyond – specifically in lesson-planning, marking and feedback.

The [wellbeing and retention of teachers]Education staff wellbeing charter – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) is a really important issue in the UK, as I know it is in the Republic of Korea. Offering AI tools that support the teaching profession will lead to better outcomes for teachers and their pupils. Our research also showed that parents want government to regulate AI education products. There was consensus on the need for mandatory quality assurance of tools developed for schools, so they know which products are trustworthy. There is a problem in acting on what we’ve learned so far. When we ran tests on standard generative AI tools, it became clear that they aren’t yet good enough. They can’t mark well or give good feedback. Time and again, performance wasn’t fit for purpose. The bottom line is that AI tools need to be good enough and safe enough to use in education.

So, how can we sharpen them? The quality of generative AI tools depends on the content that underpins them. Our testing showed that performance in education tasks significantly improves when they’ve been built on pre-processed, encoded education content. In fact, when we encoded the national curriculum for AI tools’ use, their subsequent performance in marking and feedback rose from 67% to 92%. That is really significant and has informed our next steps.

Today, in partnership with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, I am announcing a £3 million content store of pre-processed education data. This library of information will be ready for use with AI. It will include our national curriculum, as well as other high quality educational content, guidance and evidence. With parents’ permission, it will also contain some pupil and teacher content.

Responsible developers will be given access, in order to build high quality, safe and effective AI tools for education. This bedrock of trustworthy content will reduce the time and cost of creating these tools, and incentivise further product development.

The content store will add to the UK’s flourishing tech market, and support our mission to build sustained economic growth. And to kick-start industry engagement, the UK government will provide a £1 million catalyst fund. This will be used to commission marking and feedback tools, built using the content store.  The fund will support up to 8 bids to create proof-of-concept products, based on the data within this unique resource.  Innovate UK will launch the competition next month, and we expect to award the first funding in November 2024.

We believe this initiative to be world-leading – the first government-approved repository of high-quality education material optimised for AI product development. It will stimulate the production of safe, legally compliant, evidence-based tools, relevant to our teachers’ needs.

Now let me come to safety. This work will solve one half of the problem, ensuring that AI tools are good enough to use in schools. But how will we know if they’re safe enough?  We need to build a shared understanding of what ‘safe’ means when it comes to AI in education. We must protect pupils from harmful content, and make sure their personal data and intellectual property is secure.  That means thoroughly exploring all the risks and how to manage them. So, while the content store and catalyst fund are accelerating product development, we will lead the conversation on safety. We will work with experts, educators and tech firms to set out how the risks of AI can be managed. By working together, we can ensure that the products used in our schools are safe – and build a market based on efficacy and safety.

In the coming months I will be inviting stakeholders to a ministerial roundtable, to build a shared commitment to AI product safety. We will use these insights to devise and publish minimum expectations for the safety of AI products in education.

So in conclusion. the UK is a country of makers and doers, people who spot technical and commercial opportunities and bring their value to the whole world.  We want to continue this tradition by leading the conversation on AI safety and efficacy, alongside our partners here today.

The UK government believes strongly in our mission to break down barriers to opportunity. I know that harnessing the power of AI will help us to achieve that by delivering growth for our economy now and helping our educators to give children and young people the best start in life to secure prosperity for the future.

I want to thank our hosts, the Republic of Korea, for founding this summit and enabling these important conversations to take place. Your leadership is bringing about meaningful collaboration, which will benefit both our teachers and our children.

Thank you.