AI at Keswick School

At Keswick School, AI should enhance the work of teachers - never replace them.

Our Approach
AI is now a permanent part of the educational landscape with the DfE running competitions with edteach firms to develop trials of tutoring software and issuing the Generative AI: product safety standards.  We have taken the view that it is better to deploy it deliberately, on our own terms and with full oversight, than the leave pupils to encounter it informally and unsupervised on personal devices.
At Keswick School we are fortunate to have the technical capability to build tools in-house - which means we, not a commercial vendor, control the data flows, the safeguarding monitoring and the pedagogical design, ensuring the tools are as targeted and effective as possible.  

Amplify Feedback - Enable staff to give feedback more often, in more detail and faster - without increasing workload.

Reinforce Learning  - Leverage AI to address misconceptions, personalise challenge, and guide pupils toward genuine understanding and mastery.

Develop Independence - Design every tool to build pupils' ability to learn for themselves - not to do the learning for them.


AI Policy and Governance
Our use of AI is governors by a formal school-wide policy, reviewed annually by the AI lead, SLT team and Governors.  It sets out permitted use, staff responsibilities, pupil expectations, and the oversight framework that applies to every tool in our suite.

Artificial Intelligence Policy

Our Tools
These two tools are in regular use across the school.  They form part of a wider suite of five AI tools, all governed by the school's AI policy.

Staff Tool - AutoMarker

Pupil Facing Tool

Accessibility & Inclusion

Accessibility & Inclusion

Data Protection

Data Protection

Safeguarding
Safeguarding is built into the system at every level.  Every message a pupil sends is automatically checked, before reaching the AI, for content relating to self-harm, abuse, violence, and extremism.
If anything is detected, the pupil's account is locked immediately and an alert is sent to the class teacher, the school's AI Lead, and the Designated Safeguarding Lead, who reviews the case.  Inappropriate language and off-task behaviour are also logged, and pupils who repeatedly attempt to misuse the tool are removed from the session pending teacher review.

Teachers have full visibility of every conversation through a real-time dashboard.  No location data is collected at any point.  Where camera, microphone, or audio features are available, data is processed only for the specific learning task and under the same data protection safeguards as all other pupil data.  

Environmental Considerations
Learning Compass runs on Gemini Flash Lite, a smaller and significantly more energy-efficient model than the larger frontier alternatives, with per-query energy and water consumption comparable to or lower than a standard Google search.

Questions
If you have any questions about our AI tools, our AI policy, or how your child's data is handled, please contact the school office and your query will be directed to the appropriate person.