AI use cases less often talked about
With just a couple of weeks of exams left to go, you’re probably thinking about (as well as that summer holiday you booked) how you’re going to do things even better next year.
This week’s highlights from the We Are In Beta community will help you see how others are using AI to improve their work and a chance for you to reflect on (and celebrate) the great work you’ve done this year, before committing to your next steps.
We - schools - Are In Beta - always learning (when we think about improvement)
This week
🤖 AI use cases less often talked about.
🗳️ Just one week to go to join the lineup for Curriculum Thinking Week 2025
💼 Jobs with members of the We Are In Beta Community.
🤖 AI use cases less often talked about
In case you missed it, earlier in the year I asked you to tell us what questions you’d like to ask (and what resources you like to see from) other schools about their use of AI.
Once we gathered all the questions, we asked you to share your answers to them (and any resources you’re working on). We then pooled the answers and 30+ resources in one place here.
This provided some useful benchmarks about the extent to which schools are using AI, training their staff on AI and mitigating the associated risks outlined by the DfE.
It also revealed a whole host of interesting use cases.
The most frequently cited uses cases, are unlikely to surprise you. The less frequently cited ones just might.
So instead of using up valuable real estate in this post on what you probably already know, I’ve decided to share a selection of the less often talked about use cases being rolled out by members, who are thinking about this this stuff harder that anyone.
To help you jump to the use cases that are most relevant to your role, I grouped them into three categories:
Pastoral AI use cases
Academic / curriculum AL use cases
Operations AI use cases
In each section I quoted what respondents said.
1. 🛡️ Pastoral AI use cases
Attendance - “Pattern identification in attendance and behaviour data (Claude is good at this). I am trying to get it to generate the code for me for a web app to track duty attendance in my school. It's a work in progress but I think it will be able to do it with a CSV file upload of the duty rota in the next version”.
Data analysis for parent surveys - “huge success with parental survey analysis via NotebookLM”
SEND reviews - “Excellent results and time saved. Looking to expand this”
2. 📚 Academic / curriculum AI use cases
Exam question and paper generation: “Generating full AI exam papers / Generating practice questions”
Exam marking - “Exam Marking. Strong successes in pilot programmes, developing policy for cross trust implementation”. “We have created an Mock Exam Marker that can take a full cohort of exam papers and mark them overnight for staff freeing up key time over these busy periods”.
Student data analysis - “Building Data Analysis - Using AI to support learning in building data analysis tools (e.g. I have built a tool that analyses data from all 3 Sparx platforms)”
Tutor bots - “We have created a series of tutor bots for students to help with homework and learning.”
3. ⚙️ Operations AI use
Funding and bids: “We have an agent that does automatic bid and award writing”
Website auditing: “We have an agent that finds problems and solutions to schools websites if they are not compliant”
Administrative functions: “data analysis, preparing presentations for hearings, writing responses to emails, handling complaints, writing/checking policies”.
Standard Operating procedures: “Co-pilot agents - exploring and experimenting in a controlled environment about their use for users to find information on SOPS / internal documentation”.
Prompting for emails and policies: “We have created a platform that allows all teachers to create copy, emails, policies etc with the key prompts that give the LLM the context of the school”.
If you want meet the members who are using Al in these ways and access the resources they’ve shared to implement them, tell us how you are using AI here and we’ll give you access everyone else’s contributions (and links to their profiles so you can message them).
You can also see them present how they are rolling our their curriculum related AI applications at Curriculum Thinking Week 2025.
Register here before Fri 30th June.
Have you been having success applying AI to the delivery of your subject?
The next item is for you.
🗳️ Just one week to go to join the lineup for Curriculum Thinking Week 2025
Members have been busy nominating colleagues and submitting sessions for our Curriculum Thinking Week conference from July 7th to July 11th
If you’ve not yet nominated or submitted, here are the key resources you’ll need:
Sessions shared last year
Form to tell us you would like to speak
Template slides - as GSlides or as PowerPoint.
Form to tell us someone in your team is doing incredible work
Free speaker access to see what speakers have delivered in the past
We’d love to have you involved.
If you’d like to join the line up, here are some key dates:
By Wed 11th June - tell us you'd like to speak in this short form
By Monday 23th June - share your session outline in this form
By Friday 27th June - record your session, and when it is ready, upload video, slides and docs
w/c 7th July – conference goes live! Jump in to meet fellow speakers, discuss sessions and learn from a wealth of ideas and resources on offer.
What are you (or your team) working on that’s making the biggest difference to your students’ outcomes in your subject?
Whether it’s… reading, writing, exam prep, AI, targeting groups such as SEND or something else…
…we’d love to help you show others what it looks like in your classrooms, celebrate it and get feedback on it for you.
💼 Jobs with We Are In Beta community members.
If you want to get your vacancies seen by the 23k school leaders and teachers who receive We Are In Beta newsletters across curriculum, pastoral and more, let us know here and we’ll send more info.
System Leadership
Director of HR and Compliance - Aspirations Academy Trust (Feltham). Apply here.
Trust Finance Manager - Ethos Academy Trust (Kirklees). Apply here.
Regional Lead Practitioner for Mathematics - Astrea Academy Trust (South Yorkshire). Apply here.
Regional Lead Practitioner for Mathematics - Astrea Academy Trust (Cambridgeshire). Apply here.
Regional Lead Practitioner for History - Astrea Academy Trust (South Yorkshire). Apply here.
MFL Subject Adviser (North) - United Learning (North). Apply here.
Art Consultant - Harris Federation (London). Apply here.
Drama Consultant- Harris Federation (London). Apply here.
School Governor - Mossbourne Federation (Hackney). Apply here.
Trust Associate (Governor) - Fairfax Multi-Academy Trust (Birmingham, Solihull). Apply here.
Senior Leadership
Headteacher - Glebe Junior School (Embark Multi Academy Trust, Derbyshire). Apply here.
Vice Principal (Safeguarding and Pastoral) - North Cambridge Academy (Meridian Trust, Cambridgeshire). Apply here.
Assistant Headteacher (Regional) - Joseph Norton Academy (Wellspring Academy Trust, West Yorkshire). Apply here.
Assistant Headteacher (Regional) -Springwell Special Academy (Wellspring Academy Trust, West Yorkshire). Apply here.
Associate Senior Leader - Cranbury College (Maiden Erlegh Trust, Reading). Apply here.
Middle Leadership
🇪🇸 Subject Leader - Modern Foreign Languages (Spanish) - Prince Albert High School (Prince Albert Community Trust, Birmingham). Apply here.
📖 Second in Dept. English - Prince Albert High School (Prince Albert Community Trust, Birmingham). Apply here.
Teaching
🧩 Teacher (SEN) - Grange School (Prospere Learning Trust, Manchester). Apply here.
Operations and Support roles
Regional HR Manager - Co-op Academies Trust (West Yorkshire, Manchester). Apply here.
Data Protection and Compliance Manager -Harris Federation (London). Apply here.
Deputy Cluster Facilities Manager - Oasis Community Learning (London). Apply here.
Executive Personal Assistant - Areté Learning Trust (North Yorkshire). Apply here.
PA to the Directors - DRET (Loughborough). Apply here.
Breakfast Club Assistant - St Anne's Church Academy (The Priory Learning Trust, North Somerset). Apply here
On a personal note.
Social media and conferences can be scary places at the moment.
You’d be forgiven for thinking “Yikes, everyone is crushing it with AI except for me”.
Everything is changing so fast. Everyone seems to be an expert.
I certainly feel that as a founder working under the pressures of running a financially sustainable start up.
And I know that if I was teaching, I’d be struggling to carve out the time in amongst all the marking, planning and teaching to learn the seemingly endless new AI tools.
You’re pretty sure task can be done quicker. But which tool do you use? And how should you configure it to work best? And is it worth investing your time in the short term to make it much quicker in the long term? Especially, if you risk falling behind with your work load right now?
All questions I’ve asked myself.
Here’s what’s helped me:
Reminding myself that everyone else is still figuring it out too.
Asking friends and connections how they are using it.
Keeping a list of tasks that are repetitive and take up a lot of time.
Codifying them so that when you’re ready to apply AI you have done most of the hard thinking already.
Searching YouTube for examples of the tasks on my list and watching tutorials.
What’s helping you?
Just reply to this email. I’d love to hear from you.
The final thing that’s helped me is investing time and effort into finding out how our members are using to AI so we can help them learn from each other. Huge thanks to everyone who’s taken part so far.
Understanding their challenges and successes helps me to be a better community leader. Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like us to do to help.
Thanks for reading.
@NiallAlcock and the We Are In Beta team
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