How AI is Helping FE and Skills Colleges Prepare Students for Work

The use of AI in education is still in its early stages. Research with college leaders for our recent report, AI in education, how schools and further education colleges are making it work, which looked at how early adopters are using AI; and our own inspection evidence, have revealed how FE teachers and learners are using AI. And while we’ve seen AI bring many benefits to the classroom, we also know that colleges are having to navigate some challenges with it, including keeping learners safe and handling issues of plagiarism.  

Being work ready

College’s role in making sure learners and apprentices are ‘work ready’, as well as the age of FE learners, means that college leaders and teachers tend to have more reasons to use AI and fewer barriers. Leaders see competent AI use as something that employers would value highly as a skill.

As one deputy executive put it: 

“I honestly don’t think as a college we can put the toothpaste back in the tube. I think that what we need to do is we need to embrace it. We need to shape it. We need to make sure that the framework we’ve got is safe for everybody. But I don’t think we can go back because actually I think we’re doing a disservice to our students who are going to go into employment and be hit with something called AI and we’ve not educated them to deal with that.”  

To give a further example, leaders and teachers on an art and design course we spoke to said failing to acknowledge and teach the use of AI tools may disadvantage learners against competitors when they’re looking for work, because AI is fast becoming an emerging norm in their industry.  

Advantages in learning 

The age of FE learners also means there are fewer restrictions on using AI in the classroom. Therefore, instead of trying to stop learners using AI, FE colleges are actually helping students take advantage of its benefit, while also teaching them about the consequences of plagiarism or academic malpractice.  

Colleges are also increasingly creating their own chatbots to act as individual tutors. Learners can ask the chatbot a question and, rather than giving a straight answer, their chatbot tutor has been trained to ask further questions, guiding the learner to find the answer for themselves.  

Another benefit identified during our research was where ESOL students used AI to convert text to audio files, which helped with their English pronunciation, or to translate information into their home language to aid with their understanding.  

However, there are high levels of digital poverty among learners taking ESOL courses, which is a significant barrier to using AI, and means not all learners can access and use AI tools to benefit their studies.  

Challenges in using AI 

During our research, it was clear that FE leaders and teachers recognised the challenges in managing AI usage among their learners. For instance, although they could limit access on site, it was impossible to manage this off site. Thus, their focus was on supporting learners to use AI appropriately. 

On a creative writing course, one teacher described how AI had been useful for generating ideas and providing background information for stories. And on an art and design foundation diploma course, learners used AI tools to generate alternative interpretations of their design ideas, which sometimes led them to rethink elements of their creative proposal. However, it’s true that learners on this course were often sceptical about the quality of AI-rendered visual solutions! 

As more learners use AI, college leaders say they are having to decide how to deal with increasing concerns about plagiarism. Leaders gave our researchers examples of learners using AI tools to produce text, and then asking the tool to refine it to ensure it was natural sounding. Unfortunately, there is currently no fully reliable tool available to help teachers detect this.  

Instead, leaders told us how they are looking to introduce an array of assessment processes, such as professional discussion, timed in-class assignments, and extra quizzes to reduce the risk of plagiarism in written assignments. But, while teachers said that AI tools has reduced their workload in certain areas, the time needed to check potentially plagiarised work has increased it elsewhere. And for some teachers, plagiarism felt like a grey area, as everyone struggled to keep up with the AI’s potential to be used for malpractice. 

Conclusion  

FE colleges find themselves at a crucial juncture – while AI presents unprecedented opportunities to enhance learning and prepare students for a rapidly changing workplace, it also demands the careful navigation of complex challenges around academic integrity and digital equity. The colleges featured in our research demonstrate that success lies not in avoiding AI, but in embracing it thoughtfully while at the same time developing robust frameworks to support both learners and staff.  

As AI becomes increasingly embedded in industry practices, FE colleges that proactively adapt their teaching methods and assessment strategies will be best positioned to equip their students with the digital literacy and critical thinking skills essential for their future employment.  

By Alex Jones, Director of Insights and Research at Ofsted