Across most trusts, staff are already exploring AI in their own ways and at their own pace. But without a joined-up strategy, it’s hard for MAT central teams to see where these tools are really having an impact, or to make sure they’re being used safely and consistently.
We recently hosted a webinar with leaders from Creative Education Trust and Consortium Academy Trust to hear how they’re moving from fragmented exploration of AI tools to a proactive, consistent, trustwide approach.
What is Arbor AI?
Seamlessly built into your MIS, Arbor AI turns your requests into actions and makes everyday tasks even easier. Key features include:
- Ask Arbor: Your built-in AI assistant. No more clicking through menus, exporting into Excel or waiting on colleagues. Just ask a question and get the data straight from Arbor – instantly.
- Suggest Comms: Drafts emails, SMS, or in-app messages for you in seconds. It can write in your preferred tone of voice and even translate into different languages
- Suggest Student Summary: Pulls qualitative teacher notes together with attendance and assessment data to create a holistic student overview for parents or pastoral meetings
- Auto Absence: Transcribes voicemails and logs absence codes so you can just check and approve, saving attendance officers at least an hour a day
- Ofsted Inspection Companion: Pulls together the key data inspectors need to see and helps you add your unique context and narrative, ready for your 8am pre-inspection meeting.
How are schools and trusts really using Arbor AI?
- Saving hours a day on absence management
Both trusts are using Auto Absence, which transcribes voicemail messages and logs absence codes so you can just check and approve them. “The feedback we’re getting is that, for attendance teams, it’s saving them anywhere between 2 and 5 hours a week – and that’s consistent across the board.” — Ash Mudaliar, Creative Education Trust. Danny Garton from Consortium Academy Trust agreed and said that for larger schools with higher numbers of absent students, the time savings are even higher: “The biggest school, our all-through school that has just under 2000 students, they’re saving almost 2.5 hours a day on attendance, which means now the schools are able to get onto the parents quicker.”
- Better insight into data
Our built-in AI assistant Ask Arbor is used across both trusts to answer day-to-day questions like “which students in year 9 are absent today?” much more quickly than building a report. Katie Glenister-Soos shared that this isn’t just saving time, it’s empowering staff to dig into a deeper level of analysis: “Now we are seeing more effective use of Ask Arbor to help staff with more complex things they’re doing with their data”.
- Making Ofsted preparation less stressful
Our panel were excited about the potential of the new Ofsted Inspection Companion to reduce stress in the run-up to an inspection and cut down the data preparation time. Ash shared that “the initial feedback [from schools who’ve tried the report] is really positive. Obviously we wouldn’t just blindly give the report to an Ofsted Inspector, but it helps support and provide insights that we would certainly share. […] It’s got several of our leaders quite excited!”
Top tips for rolling out AI at your MAT
Advice from Ash Mudaliar, Director of IT at Creative Education Trust, on how to roll out AI tools successfully at scale.
1. Start with low-hanging fruit
If staff are skeptical, the best place to start is with simple, relatively low-risk processes like drafting emails, summarising documents or transcribing meetings. When staff see how much time they can save on everyday admin tasks, and that the output is reliable, they’ll be more likely to embrace a bigger change.
“What we’re trying to do is increase confidence around AI and give staff in our schools access to secure AI tools that they can actually use”
2. Ask staff how they feel – and expect Marmite reactions!
Before you start trying to implement a change, it’s always a good idea to start by taking the temperature of your staff and asking how they feel about using AI. This gives you a clear picture of where you need to build more confidence and what concerns people have that you need to address.
“It’s a bit like Marmite actually and that you’ve got those that are very strongly for it and see the value it brings and then you’ve got those that have quite strong views against it.”
3. Pilot first
Piloting a new tool at one or two schools first is a great way to check that it has a genuine impact, and it also means that the schools who’ve tried it first can champion the new way of doing things to their colleagues, rather than it feeling like an order from above.
“What’s great about our schools is […] you’ve always got one or two that are chomping at the bit to try new things. […] After we got some initial feedback to show, okay, this is genuinely having an impact… that then steered us towards that trust-wide decision.”
5. Keep things consistent
If you can, keep your approach to setup and rollout the same across all schools so you know it’s consistent and you can apply lessons learnt along the way. It can also help to establish some light trust-level guidelines on how to use the tools – for example, how to prompt Ask Arbor efficiently, and what kind of tasks to use it for.
“I think what was helpful is that our central IT team did the setup [of Auto Absence] for all schools, so it was a consistent approach.”
6. Keep a “Human-in-the-Loop”
Many staff are skeptical about AI because of concerns about professional accountability and job security. It’s vital to keep a human in the loop, so there’s professional oversight and judgement applied even to an automated process. For example, with Auto Absence the absence is transcribed and logged automatically, but a human has to check and approve it.
“We’ve always got a constant theme within our approach to AI and that’s the human in the loop element. So really reinforcing that AI supports people but never replaces professional judgment.”
7. Make time for people to train and learn
This is one of the hardest things to do in a busy school or trust, but Ash emphasises that it’s a trade-off between the time you spend on training now, and the time you’ll save in the future by automating or speeding up manual tasks. He recommends booking time in your CPD calendar in advance to make sure colleagues are developing their AI skills and knowledge.
“The other challenge… is just actually getting the airtime in the CPD calendar within school. It’s a balance – you have to make time to save time later.”
