Interview with Anthony Lees, Deputy Head of School for Marpool Primary School and EdTech Lead for the Cornerstone Academy Trust

"I believe the power of technology is about bringing equity of opportunity to learners - to all pupils and students - by raising universal provision, and not simply through the accessibility tools, which are the obvious quick wins, (i.e. text to speech, speech to text etc), all of which is hugely important and makes a big difference to teaching and learning.”
 
Deputy Head of School for Marpool Primary School in Devon, Anthony is also the EdTech Lead for the Cornerstone Academy Trust.

Previously Ant was the Primary Lead for The National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) Computing Hub for Devon and Dorset and for the Cornerstone EdTech Demonstrator School. Other roles include a Specialist Leader of Education (SLE) and SSAT Lead Practitioner Facilitator and Ant is currently supporting the RISE Digital Skills and AI Hub.

For 15 years, Ant has led the Trust's EdTech strategy and approach to online safety, driving the one-to-one device programme within the project-based curriculum, and also maintains the Trust’s Microsoft Showcase School Status. 

The SWIFT Team are grateful to Ant who has trained us over the years on various aspects of digital learning, and we are always grateful to learn from his expertise.

As AI moves apace for us all and is part of the SWIFT professional development programme this year, it seemed a timely juncture to find out more about Ant’s journey and work in the world of digital learning. 

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1. What has been your personal journey into digital learning and AI?
Reflecting for this interview, it has been a very interesting journey!
 
I was a class teacher for about ten years, then spent some time in different schools teaching Music. After a short time in Broadclyst Primary School doing various music-related teaching my role gradually moved into EdTech, as I was a bit of a nerd, as well as into Music and choirs. Gradually my role became more about the EdTech and staff development and training and suddenly, I had found a niche for something that I loved.

Broadclyst had already academized at the first opportunity and within a few years of being in post, it became apparent that this area was growing and it needed to become a Multi Academy Trust, and it was by building some Free Schools and taking other schools into the Trust my role evolved into leading EdTech for the Trust, but also staff development and CPD, as we have a lot of Early Career Teachers within the Trust and my role included supporting them.
 
During this time, Cornerstone got further involved in running the Science Hub for the area and gradually, I became a Senior Professional Development Lead for STEM, taking on the running of the primary arm of The National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) for Devon and Dorset in partnership with Exeter Maths School. My role evolved from leaving the classroom to becoming heavily involved in CPD and the development of colleagues and eventually into leadership and I have been Deputy Head of a few of our Trust schools over that period too.

Because of the heavy lean on EdTech, we have been very involved in the Microsoft Showcase School Network and my roles necessitated ensuring, for example that our schools maintain the Showcase Status, training up our staff to be Microsoft Innovative Educator Experts, and securing Microsoft Certified Educator (MCE) accreditation. That has been a fun part of the journey as we have always been at the forefront of trying to push what is innovative in education and how technology can leverage the best support for learners and teachers and as AI has moved to the forefront, it has become our new horizon.

As I said earlier, I am a bit of a nerd and a tinkerer, as far as technology goes, and I have always been aspirationally looking for what is the next best app, the next best tool for myself, but also for technology; which I would call “a hopeful unsettledness.”

2. What do you find to be most rewarding in your role as EdTech Lead for the Cornerstone Academy Trust?
For me at the core, I think it is about supporting and developing colleagues, because I find that very rewarding and I also know that it is the best way to have an impact at scale to improve the opportunities for learners. Now that I am not in the classroom myself, that is my best vehicle and is very rewarding.
 
3. What do you believe to be the main benefits of digital learning and AI in education today?
Building on the second question, I believe the power of technology is about bringing equity of opportunity to learners - to all pupils and students - by raising universal provision, and not simply through the accessibility tools, which are the obvious quick wins, (i.e. text to speech, speech to text etc), all of which is hugely important and makes a big difference to teaching and learning.
 
At Cornerstone, we are very embedded in the Microsoft Platform in Teams, and that ability for learners to collaborate at whatever scale is appropriate for the project cannot be undervalued and I genuinely believe that we are preparing our learners for a future job market that has yet to exist; which you might say, is the ultimate goal for education. We are not looking to be the matrix, to plug learners in and turn-out brilliant form fillers. We are looking to develop young people that have the skills they need, and which we would beratingly call soft skills, the reasoning part of the three R's, and which are so valuable.

On the AI front, the more I listen to some clever people talk about this topic, I think the benefits for students is the speed of feedback that AI can provide learners and the consistency. We are now at a stage where we have proven that consistency of feedback is much better from AI than it is from a teacher, however well-meaning and able. On the staff side, the obvious benefits that are hugely powerful include time-saving, quality, and the ability of AI to draw links between large amounts of information, which as an individual, I do not have the cognitive bandwidth to hold and the ability to draw ideas together and to spot links that maybe an individual practitioner would not be able to do.
 
4. What do you consider to be the main challenges and what steps do you take to overcome them?
Reference EdTech, I think the current main problem is that we are at a point where there is a confusion about what is the place of technology in the lives of young people, both at home and in the classroom.

There is some great work going on here. Mobile phone awareness is perhaps the biggest. For example, Smartphone Free Childhood, who are undertaking absolutely incredible work that I completely endorse in helping parents to see what is the right time and boundaries for smartphone use. However, there can be a lot of confusion about mobile phones in general and devices and there is a huge screen time debate underway that is probably more prevalent than it has ever been. It is important, and very powerful and positive that discussion and debate is going on, of which more and more people, including parents, play a part.
 
The downside is that it leads to a confusion about the place of technology in education and one can sometimes become a stick to beat the other if we are not careful. For us at Cornerstone, what we have learned over the last few years is to simplify our message about how technology contributes to our project-based curriculum and to the opportunities and provision that we are putting in place for learners. For screen time, we try to be very, very clear about the difference between using a device to access resources and to check the information, which is very different to bingeing on Netflix or sitting on your Xbox in the evening.

For AI, there is a danger in avoiding the cognitive heavy lifting that comes from work and the exercise of learning, recalling what you have learned, applying it in situations and creating something new. If we are not careful, there is an opportunity for AI to be seen as a mechanism to skirt around that very important process and not to flex those mind muscles. In a time of increased social media usage, declining attention spans, and an inability to single task - that I see in myself as much as in other people – herein lies the danger for me. I think the solution is for us to be clear with families and all our stakeholders and pupils.
 
5. What are your hopes (ideally) for the future of digital learning and AI in education?
Cornerstone is one of the founding organisations of the Digital Skills and AI Hub, which is a RISE-funded project currently giving us opportunities to test and learn, which we are doing at scale with two other Trusts, and with ten different working parties who are trying out how AI can be used in all sorts of different contexts, classroom, student feedback, back office processes, business, finance, workload, and for leadership and governance.

With the test and learn, we are looking at what can we learn? What is the right way forward?
My real aspiration is that as AI evolves into a more mature technology for education, and we develop those safe and ethical tools for education, as we are at a place where sometimes we have to compromise on the facility in order to use it safely. As an example, I would say that as an organisation, we are in the Microsoft world, hence our tenancy is on Teams, including SharePoint etc and CoPilot is very safe within that world. However, there are incredible things that can also be done with Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini and all sorts of other tools. But they are not safely in our tenancy, and we are not using them and will be missing opportunities at the moment. Yet, it is more important that our learners' data is safe and ring-fenced than we explore those opportunities.

But over time, as the tech matures, it is my hope that safe and ethical facility becomes more available and there will be lots of tools that we can use. If I were to name-drop a few, I would say through Magma and Olex.ai who are developing tools that not only mark and return grades to pupils (because that has been around for a while); but now tools that take the input submitted by the pupil and develop new challenges and tasks for the learner based on what the students submitted. That is exciting because we are into a time of bespoke use of technology for each individual, rather than pushing them through a conveyor-belt of experiences.
 
From the work of the Digital Skills and AI Hub it has been clear to us that the biggest impact for schools is those who are experimenting and testing. I would encourage other Schools and Trusts to join the Hub and get involved. This is an exciting time in education and to be involved in the process of shaping the future impact of AI in education.

5. What would be your five Top Tips for using AI?
TIP 1: Start with the problem, not the tool.
What is it that is limiting learning? What is challenging teachers?

TIP 2: Use AI to amplify teacher thinking, not replace it.
AI can draft a good lesson, but it does not know your pupils. It is about doing something to enhance the learners. The power comes from the teacher's ability to refine and adapt, not from the ability of the AI to produce something quickly.

TIP 3:  Turn one thing into many.
AI gives you the ability to take smart wins from a single text or lesson and allows you to create multiple things for different age ability readers, and cognitive levels and response expectations.

You could add more challenging questions, more inference and deduction, and not simply recall and to generate discussion prompts.

TIP 4: Model great learning, not simply great answers.
You can get pupils to use AI to get answers instantly.
As we are a primary MAT, we do not give our pupils direct access to chat-based AI as that is clearly legally inappropriate and not the goal.

We are however, looking at how we can use AI to help teach pupils how to think. To spot the question, mistakes, how to improve and refine responses over time. That is where I think the power is in using AI as a thinking partner, and critical friend, rather than your first draught buddy.

Let the tool get to know you because the more your AI tool understands your context, role and drivers and your objectives, the better quality the response. Rubbish in, rubbish out.

TIP 5: Start small - but start now.
A whole AI strategy for your school might be down the road.
In the first instance pick a single problem. For example, planning feedback.  Trial it and get it up and running because the AI and digital technology is not yet mature, but is evolving all the time and the only way to be on board is to start dipping in your toe.

We thank Ant for his thought-provoking interview and his thoughtful leadership on the increasingly compelling topic of digital learning and AI.
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Interview by Jude Baylis, SWIFT Executive Assistant  

RISE DIGITAL SKILLS AND AI HUB

CORNERSTONE ACADEMY TRUST

CONTACT ANT LEES HERE