The Department for Education (DfE) has launched an AI powered tool for schools in England to benchmark their attendance records against similar schools.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announced the launch last week, among with a handful of other measures to support the use of AI in schools.
The attendance reports tool has been made available to schools and responsible bodies through the View Your Education Data platform.
It uses AI to search the DfE’s datasets and identify 20 schools with similar characteristics, such as pupil demographics and location, and provide reports on their attendance figures. This enables the user to benchmark their own school’s performance and see where they are following good practice or need to improve.
The tool has been used in pilots before the full roll out and Phillipson said it is believed to be among the first of its kind in the word.
“Every mainstream school in the country can access reports right now to benchmark their performance against 20 similar schools,” she said. “They highlight what the schools are doing well, and where they need targeted intervention and support.
“That’s the kind of cutting edge insights schools need to get attendance moving.”
This follows her announcement early this year that the Government expects a big increase in the use of AI in schools, and a round of funding by the DfE to support developers in creating prototypes.
But Phillipson said last week that there is a need to build a larger evidence base on how AI can best support education.
She referred to the Government’s support for the EdTech Hub and the AI Observatory and Action Lab, and announced that it is funding the development of global guidelines for the use of generative AI in the sector...read more