Eight in ten teachers (80 per cent) now use artificial intelligence (AI) for their work, and weekly use has doubled in the past year, a new study finds.

Among teachers who use AI, half (51 per cent) say it has eased their workload, but only a third (35 per cent) say they work fewer hours. For most, the time saved on one job is swallowed by another. More than half (55 per cent) work the same hours as before, and four per cent work more.

The Department for Education’s £23 million EdTech testbed for AI will be judged in part on its effect on teacher workload. These new findings suggest that an AI-enhanced shorter week has not yet arrived.  

The picture comes from Working It Out, a report based on a survey of 1,033 UK teachers carried out by YouGov for Bett, the education technology exhibition.

Among those who use it, three-quarters (76 per cent) build lesson resources such as plans and worksheets, and around four in ten draft letters and emails to parents (39 per cent) or write pupil reports (39 per cent). Assessment is another matter. Just 8 per cent say that they use AI to mark or grade pupils’ work.

For the first time since the Bett AI research programme began in 2024, teachers’ enthusiasm for the technology is fading. Fewer than half (47 per cent) expect to use AI more over the coming year, down from two-thirds (68 per cent) 12 months ago.  
“Teachers are using AI more than ever, but their enthusiasm for it is cooling,” said Duncan Verry, Portfolio Director at Bett.  
“They tell us it saves them time on particular jobs, but most say they are not working fewer hours. The time comes back and something else fills it. Teachers are still reaching for AI, but they have just stopped expecting quite so much of it.”


Schools continue to give their staff limited AI support. Two in five teachers (41 per cent) have still had no training from their school for using AI, and almost half (48 per cent) say their school has no written policy on staff use of it. Where a policy does exist, only 18 per cent say they understand it well.  
And the support available is unevenly spread. Teachers in independent schools are more likely to get some (61 per cent) than those in state schools (41 per cent).

Teachers’ biggest worry is not about themselves but about their pupils. Most secondary teachers (71 per cent) think AI has made it easier for children to cheat and get away with it. In secondary schools, suspicion has become part of the working week. Over half (57 per cent) of secondary teachers suspected at least one pupil of handing in AI-assisted work without permission in the past four weeks, against 9 per cent in primary. Over a year, three-quarters (76 per cent) of secondary teachers who mark work have graded a piece they suspected was AI-generated.

Just four per cent of teachers would keep extended-writing coursework exactly as it stands. The largest group (30 per cent) would keep coursework but add better detection software, while almost as many (29 per cent) would replace it with writing done under supervision in class and 9 per cent would drop it altogether.  


On teaching children to use AI responsibly, just over half (52 per cent) of teachers are open to making curriculum room for it, while a third (33 per cent) are not. Asked which subject should give up the time, teachers most often named PSHE (22 per cent), well ahead of modern foreign languages (8 per cent), English (7 per cent) and humanities (5 per cent).