Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what purposes the Education and Skills Funding Agency has used artificial intelligence in the last 12 months.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the heart of the government’s plan to kickstart an era of economic growth, transform how we deliver public services, and boost living standards for working people across the country.

The Education and Skills Finding Agency (ESFA) has aligned to the wider departmental approach in this area. Specifically, the department has been using Microsoft Copilot, an AI-based web chat with commercial protection, for various means, including:

• ​Question answering – searching the web to answer a range of questions from factual, creative to analytical.
• ​Information retrieval and summarisation – for example from a policy or data publication.
• ​Learning new skills – for example, improving writing skills or use of analytical skills.
• ​Pattern recognition and data analysis.
• Natural language understanding and generation, which is ideal for conversation, content creation, and summarisation.

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In addition, 150 people across the department are piloting Microsoft 365 Copilot, which leverages AI to automate and accelerate tasks in Microsoft Products. This work included people from the ESFA. The department is tracking the benefits of this pilot, which currently include:

• ​Increased productivity.
• ​Less time in meetings.
• ​Ability to search and analyse data more effectively.
• ​Less repetitive tasks.
• ​Increased efficiency in drafting.
• ​Ability to be more creative.
• ​User satisfaction.

​Since summer 2023, the department has created a secure Microsoft Azure Open AI sandbox environment. The ESFA has also utilised this facility. This allows limited groups of users to build and test AI models based on specific uses cases, in a safe and secure environment. Use cases including those from the ESFA are approved by a technology-led steering group, and this group will ultimately decide on which applications could potentially be moved into production for use more broadly across the organisation.

The department draws on a range of resources, published on GOV.UK, to inform our AI usage. For example, the Generative AI Framework, the Ethics, Transparency and Accountability Framework, the Data Ethics Framework, the AI Opportunities Action Plan and the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard. ​

The department has also had access to the Central Digital and Data Office, based in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, for expert advice.