AI could save teachers 'hours' of marking time

Liverpool Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram with Runnymede St Edwards Primary School head Kate Peaston and Century Tech CEO Priya Lakhani

Schools in Liverpool are being offered the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to help teachers tailor lessons to individual children and mark their homework.

The pilot scheme is part of a deal struck between technology company Century Tech and Liverpool City Region mayor Steve Rotheram.

The Century platform promises individual tuition with questions hand-picked for each student.

Mr Rotheram said he hoped the deal would help improve chances for students in a city where educational attainment for young people lags behind other areas.

Pupils at Runnymede have been doing homework tasks assigned with the help of AI

Runnymede St Edwards Primary School in West Derby has been using AI for three years and hosted an open day for other schools.

Year Six pupil Noah told the BBC Today programme how the platform works.

“Let's say you're really good at your times tables and you're really bad at, let's say, science," he said.

"It'll decide to give you a bit more science and put the times tables at a bit of a standby where you can still do it, but science is a bit more up to try and get you intrigued with it."

Each child in the class will get their own homework, but the AI system also marks that work, taking the burden away from teachers.

The class teacher will then be sent a breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses of each pupil.

National roll-out

Priya Lakhani, founder and chief executive of Century, said the tool offered teachers the chance to identify where gaps in skills are.

"That is impossible to do as one human being, one teacher in the classroom with 25 to 35 children without the technology," she said.

Joe Quilty, the teacher at Runnymede who is looking after the Century system, said using it for homework had saved hours of time that could be better used elsewhere.

"It's massive for the likes of me, for example, most evenings I’ll go home, I get in about half five, six, I'll sit and have tea with the family, but then I have to sit down and spend an hour or two marking to get it ready for the next day," he said.

Mr Rotheram said he hoped the pilot scheme would result in a national roll-out.

"Our qualification standards after secondary education are so poor that about half of our kids are going into the colleges or into their new roles and needing to have top ups to English and mathematics," he said.

"That can't be right.

"We're failing kids at an early stage, and then we're trying to intervene, and it costs an awful lot of money to do that at that stage."