The Case for Smaller School AI Pilots
May 20, 2026
Schools do not need a whole-school AI rollout to learn what works. In many cases, a smaller pilot is the safer and smarter route: one use case, one team, one agreed success measure, and clear rules for when to scale, pause or stop. This article explains how micro-pilots help school leaders test value without creating unnecessary risk, staff overload or procurement confusion. It offers a practical 30-day structure, sensible review points, and a leadership checklist for making grounded decisions before wider adoption.
Primary Assessment Week with AI
May 14, 2026
Primary assessment week can feel intense, especially when SATs and spring tests collide with room changes, staff absences, and parent communication. This guide shows how AI can reduce administrative pressure safely before and after the papers, while keeping a clear boundary around live assessment, pupil responses, and test security. It offers practical, low-risk ways to handle timetables, messages, notes, and follow-up planning without straying into malpractice or overclaiming what data can say.
What Students Use AI For
April 17, 2026
Before schools tighten AI rules, it helps to know what students are actually doing. A short tutor-time audit can gather anonymous evidence about revision, homework, emotional support, shortcutting and confusion about boundaries, without turning the process into a disciplinary exercise. This article offers a practical 30-minute model, ten adaptable survey questions, guidance for leading a calm discussion, and advice on turning patterns into proportionate policy, teaching and pastoral responses that are rooted in real student need.
The School AI Renewal Checklist for 2026
April 10, 2026
AI renewals in 2026 need more than a quick price comparison or a reassuring sales call. School leaders now face tougher questions about where services are available, which legal entity they are buying from, how training data was sourced, and whether suppliers are ready for the EU AI Act and similar rules. This 12-question checklist helps schools test evidence, not marketing claims, before renewing any AI subscription. It is designed for senior leaders, governors, procurement teams and IT staff who want a practical, defensible way to decide whether to renew, renegotiate or walk away.
Spring Term AI Audit Scorecard
March 30, 2026
Spring term is an ideal point for departments to review how AI is actually affecting workload, teaching quality and risk. A simple audit scorecard can move discussion beyond headline claims about time saved and reveal hidden rework, uneven staff confidence, data concerns and weak curriculum fit. This article outlines a practical five-part framework that helps teams decide what to scale, pause, replace or stop before summer term, without creating another layer of unnecessary admin.
AI chatbot safeguarding pre-flight checklist
March 28, 2026
Recent harmful chatbot incidents have changed the safeguarding conversation for schools. Allegations linked to the Gemini wrongful death lawsuit, the Character.ai crisis and other cases show why leaders cannot treat student AI access as a simple edtech rollout. Before any pupil uses a general chatbot, schools need clear thresholds, supervision rules, escalation pathways, procurement evidence and staff training. This article uses these incidents as forensic case studies to build a practical pre-flight checklist that helps leaders decide whether to proceed, restrict access or pause student use altogether.
GPT-5.4 school briefing
March 27, 2026
GPT-5.4 has arrived with the usual flood of enterprise messaging, but most school leaders do not need to rewrite policy or replace working tools. This briefing focuses on the practical questions: whether lower token limits matter in real school workflows, where more autonomous operation may help or create risk, and which existing GPT-based routines should be kept, retested or rebuilt. The goal is simple: help leaders make calm, evidence-based decisions without overreacting to headlines, vendor claims or product noise.
EU AI Act roadmap for schools
March 17, 2026
The EU AI Act is no longer a distant policy issue for schools. Education is one of the areas where certain AI uses can be classed as high-risk, which means leaders need a clear plan before August 2026. This guide explains the rules in plain English, highlights the school use cases most likely to raise concern, and sets out a practical compliance roadmap. It also shows how Swedish schools can connect AI governance with procurement and data protection, so decisions are calm, documented and defensible rather than rushed at the last minute.
DeepSeek, Claude and AI procurement
February 26, 2026
Allegations that DeepSeek may have trained on Claude outputs are more than a dispute between AI companies. For schools, they highlight a practical procurement problem: whether suppliers can explain where training data came from, how model outputs were collected, and what legal and operational risks sit downstream. This article uses the case as a clear-eyed procurement study, translating technical concerns into questions leaders can ask now about data lineage, licensing, indemnities, audit rights and contractual red lines before adopting any AI system.
Anthropic’s AI Constitution: School Lessons
January 21, 2026
Anthropic’s expanded 23,000-word AI Constitution offers schools a useful case study in how AI safety frameworks become more detailed over time. The value for school leaders is not in copying a vendor document, but in noticing what gets made explicit: new harm categories, clearer boundary rules, and sharper decisions about when a system should refuse, redirect, or escalate. This article explores what that evolution can teach schools about AI policy, acceptable-use clauses, and safeguarding guidance, and provides a practical way to turn broad vendor language into school-ready rules.
ChatGPT Adverts and School AI Risk
January 19, 2026
ChatGPT’s move towards adverts is more than a product update. For school leaders, it is a warning that the long period of seemingly free, stable consumer AI may be ending. If staff workflows now depend on free-tier tools, monetisation changes can quickly affect access, reliability, privacy expectations and trust. This briefing explains why UK and Swedish schools should shift core routines off consumer free tiers, how to identify the most exposed workflows, and what procurement, policy and contingency steps to take this term.
Claude Cowork for Non-Technical School Staff
January 12, 2026
Claude Cowork offers a more approachable way for non-technical school staff to use AI in daily operations without needing code, scripts or specialist setup. For department heads, SENCOs, office teams and operations staff, it can support report drafting, timetabling analysis, communication and resource creation in a workspace built around prompts, files and review. The key is using it with clear guardrails: minimum-data inputs, accessibility checks, human sign-off and strong governance so AI supports professional judgement rather than replacing it.
ChatGPT Health and European Schools
January 5, 2026
A major AI health launch can quickly trigger interest from school leaders, PSHE leads and safeguarding teams, especially when headlines suggest new support for wellbeing conversations. Yet if a service is not available in the UK, EEA and Switzerland, schools need a calm, evidence-based response. This briefing explains how to verify geographic availability, avoid mistaken procurement assumptions, assess data protection and safeguarding risks, and put a no-regrets contingency plan in place using human-led support and approved alternatives for the current term.
January INSET AI Policy Sprint Pack
December 29, 2025
January is a practical moment to refresh your school’s AI acceptable use policy, especially after a busy autumn term and new governance developments. This sprint pack turns policy review into a focused 90-minute INSET session, with clear discussion prompts, lift-and-adapt clauses, and implementation steps for the first month back. It also highlights what has changed for 2026, including EU AI Act phase-in, updated DfE guidance, and the rise of long-context and agent-like tools.
End-of-Term AI Privacy Audit Checklist
December 17, 2025
End of term is one of the best times to review how AI tools are handling staff and pupil data. This practical checklist helps schools identify which tools have actually been used, what information sits inside them, who owns the accounts, and whether retention, export and deletion routes are clear. Using disappearing chat history after consent changes as a cautionary example, the article shows how to reduce risk before the holidays and set up simpler, safer governance for the new term.