AI could save billions of pounds a year says Earwig's CEO

AI is at the forefront of the government’s digital strategy for education, but is it the right approach? In fact, AI could save the exchequer billions of pounds a year says Earwig Academic’s CEO Peter Gelardi...

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“Life is sometimes a race between life getting more complicated and technology designed to make life easier.

AI will give technology the upper hand in this race over the next few years.  Here’s one example…

More and more pupils are being diagnosed with special needs.  This is putting a tremendous strain on the education system to provide the specialised and individually created and delivered teaching and support that these pupils need.

Education technology companies are working on AI supported software applications that will help school administrators and teachers in many different ways.  This is what Earwig is working on…

Currently special needs teachers spend many hours creating individualised learning frameworks for each special needs pupil, then setting targets in order to measure their progress. Then they have to plan lessons based on these targets, deliver the lessons and then evidence and evaluate the progress achieved.

Earwig’s AI tools will help teachers by…

• Suggesting the appropriate objectives for each pupil, based on their previous performance and the learning achieved by thousands of other pupils with similar needs.
• Breaking these down into shorter term targets, based on the same criteria and evolve these targets based on actual progress achieved.
• Provide each teacher with outline lesson plans for each lesson.
• Provide suggested content for each lesson, based on the child’s known preferences and inclinations.
• Evaluate photos and video of the lesson to provide an accurate summary of the session and grade the pupil against the agreed targets.
• Monitor each child’s performance and produce draft summaries and reports for parents and school leaders.

When fully implemented and understood by school staff, this could mean that each special needs teacher could handle twice the number of pupils that they now can.

This would provide enough slack in the system to accommodate all the new special needs pupils and still save the exchequer billions of pounds a year.'“

Peter Gelardi

CEO

Earwig Academic Reporting Ltd

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