School students ‘losing ability to have a conversation’ due to AI

Young people’s use of AI-powered tools like chatbots is impacting their ability to hold a conversation, according to a new survey.

Two in three (66%) secondary school teachers say their pupils’ critical thinking has declined because of the novel tech.

This was more than double the proportion of primary school teachers who felt the same, the National Education Union (NEU) said.

Teachers told the union in February how, as children increasingly treat machine algorithms as ‘friends’, they don’t need to speak as much.

Most chatbots see users input text into a bar on their phone or laptop screen, with the model, called generative AI, replying within seconds.

One anonymous English teacher and NEU member, who did not take part in the survey, tells Metro that all homework at his school is online, making it ‘easy’ for pupils to cheat with ChatGPT.

‘Even when asked to handwrite their answers, some have got an AI to write up an answer to then copy by hand,’ he says.

Students can ‘parrot’ what he teaches them with ease. Forming an argument, however, not so much.

This is how some of the teachers surveyed felt, despite 76% using AI tools every day, up from 53% the year before.

The 9,400 teachers used them to create resources (61%), plan lessons (41%), for admin (38%) and marking (7%).

‘AI marking was used for some assessments recently and it was so inaccurate that the department decided not to use it again,’ the NEU member says.

‘AI tutors’ to become a reality next year

Yet a ‘Mr AI’ could soon be asking students to sit up and pay attention in schools as the government aims to roll out ‘AI tutors’ by the end of 2027.

Government officials tell Metro that these tools could save teachers time and customise student learning for more than 450,000 children from disadvantaged backgrounds, who often lag behind tutored peers.

Officials are working with teachers, tech leaders and AI labs to complement face-to-face learning, not replace it.

In the US, where state and school districts often decide what to teach, some school systems have introduced chatbots for teaching and learning.

Iceland, meanwhile, announced the world’s first national AI education pilot. Giving teachers in even rural schools access to Claude, Anthropic’s bot.

Alex Russell, the CEO of Bourne Academy Trust, which represents schools in Hampshire, London and Surrey, wants UK teachers to embrace AI, too.

Many schools he has worked with, after some hesitation, are using machine learning to ‘reduce workloads’, an issue for many teachers.

‘In the early days, most people would almost apologize for using AI,’ Russell says. ‘”Oh, I didn’t cheat, honestly.” Whereas now, people are very open about using it.

‘Across the profession, there is some anxiety and inconsistent adoption, but we generally accept that it’s now part of the landscape.’

The NEU found that half of the schools (49%) have no policy whatsoever for the use of AI either by staff or students.

Fewer than one in six schools offer tutoring to pupils, often due to threadbare budgets or lack of staff. Children from wealthier families are far more likely to have access to it.

Libby Hills, a former teacher and founder of the research organisation EdTechnical, feels that AI tutoring could be the answer.

‘AI has made it possible to deliver something meaningfully close to that kind of support for a fraction of the cost, which means that schools that would struggle to afford a school-wide in-person tutoring program could have the option to offer unlimited AI tutoring sessions to every child who needs them,’ Hills explains.

‘For many schools, the relevant comparison isn’t AI versus a brilliant private tutor, it’s AI versus no tutoring.’

The children sitting in classroom chairs today are among the first to grow up with AI, making it more important that AI is part of the curriculum.

‘When students use general-purpose chatbots like ChatGPT in an unstructured way – where they may just be asking for answers – there are growing concerns about “cognitive offloading,”‘ says Hills.

‘Research has found students perform better while using these tools but worse when they’re taken away, because they’ve relied on the AI rather than used it to develop their own understanding.’

Not all teachers are convinced. Just 14% support the government’s planned introduction of AI tutors for disadvantaged pupils.

‘AI tutors are a waste of time, at the very least, for humanities subjects,’ the NEU member says.

‘AI might be able to explain why an equation is wrong, but they can barely mark an English essay correctly.’

The government told Metro: ‘Our mission is to break the link between background and success, and the introduction of AI tutoring tools can help make that a reality – expanding the tailored support that is often only available to a privileged few to every child who needs it.

‘No technology should replace the foundations of core knowledge and disciplinary thinking that prepares pupils for later life. But we also have to prepare children for a digitally enabled world.’

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