AI use in English schools races ahead of strategy, study finds

TL;DR:

• AI is already used across English schools, but only 2% of those surveyed have a fully developed strategy for it, according to research from Teach First and Accenture.
• 60% of school leaders use AI at least weekly, yet 63% cite limited staff confidence or skills as the main barrier to wider adoption.
• Researchers warn that uneven access to training and technology could widen the gap between schools, particularly outside London.

England’s classrooms illustrate a now-familiar pattern: the tools arrive faster than the plans to govern them. A study combining a survey of nearly 200 school leaders with 30 interviews found teachers already using AI for lesson planning, quiz creation and drafting exam questions — but mostly informally, without a school-wide approach.

Policy trails practice

The gap between using AI and steering it is stark. While 12% of surveyed schools had an AI policy setting rules, just 2% had a fuller strategy covering what the technology should achieve and where it should be limited. Accenture and Teach First describe the rest as fragmented, with schools making local decisions and no shared system for exchanging evidence.

Confidence, not cost, is the binding constraint. Some 63% of leaders named weak staff skills as a barrier, against 16% citing cost; only one in five schools currently offer AI training. A regional divide is already visible — 29% of London leaders use AI daily, against 12% elsewhere — though the authors caution this measures leaders’ own use, not classroom benefit.

The findings echo the workplace, where UK adoption is rising but the rewards cluster among a minority. In both settings the lesson is the same: access alone does not translate into capability, and without guidance early adopters pull away while others stall.

Looking forward

The report urges leaders to model responsible use themselves, start with lower-risk applications and build capability through shared learning rather than one-off training. With the survey covering roughly 6% of England’s secondary sector, it is a snapshot rather than an audit — but its warning about widening inequality between schools is one policymakers weighing national AI guidance will struggle to ignore.