Source · Select Committees · Education Committee
Recommendation 16
16
Deferred
Paragraph: 76
Consolidate digital safety guidance for teachers and invest in subject knowledge enhancement courses.
Conclusion
The next Government should consolidate non-statutory guidance on digital safety and curriculum content to provide a clear guide for teachers which should be complementary to Keeping Children Safe in School. Once this consolidation is complete the Department should invest in subject knowledge enhancement courses to ensure it reaches the wide variety of teachers who could benefit from it.
Government Response Summary
The government deflected by detailing DfE's funding for Ofsted's insights on AI use and its published advice for schools on mitigating Generative AI risks, but did not commit to consolidating all non-statutory digital safety guidance or investing in subject knowledge enhancement courses for teachers.
Paragraph Reference:
76
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
2026. DfE is also funding Ofsted to gather insights from early adopter schools and FE colleges on use of AI and the role that school and college leaders are playing. This will indicate how AI is being used to ensure that future inspections promote safe AI use in education. Ofsted already considers a school’s use of AI in terms of its effect on the criteria set out in the inspection framework. Ofsted does not directly inspect the quality of AI tools and has no plans to do so in the future. But inspectors will continue to consider how AI tools affect provision and outcomes for pupils—such as safeguarding and the quality of education—as part of the wider process of inspection. DfE has published advice for schools and colleges regarding mitigating the risks of using Generative AI. The guidance sets out that schools and colleges should: • protect personal and special category data in accordance with data protection legislation • not allow or cause intellectual property, including pupils’ work, to be used to train generative AI models, without appropriate consent or exemption to copyright • review and strengthen their cyber security by referring to the cyber standards – generative AI could increase the sophistication and credibility of attacks • ensure that children and young people are not accessing or creating harmful or inappropriate content online, including through generative AI – ‘Keeping children safe in education’ provides schools and colleges with information on ○ what they need to do to protect pupils and students online ○ how they can limit children’s exposure to risks from the school’s or college’s IT system ○ refer to the filtering and monitoring standard to make sure they have the appropriate systems in place