AI Training for Schools, MATs and Education Providers
Most UK teachers are already using AI – but without the training to use it safely or effectively. We help schools, MATs and education providers close that gap with practical, safeguarding-first AI training.
Connecting Education research (opens in a new tab) found that 76% of UK teachers have received no formal AI training, despite 60% already using AI daily. Hartz AI helps schools close that gap with safeguarding-first training designed for education settings.
76% of UK teachers have received no formal AI training, yet 60% already use AI tools daily (Connecting Education, 2025). Hartz AI delivers practical, safeguarding-first AI training for education providers – covering schools, MATs and trusts. Our programmes build staff confidence, reduce workload and help settings implement AI safely without disrupting teaching.
What Does AI Training for Teachers Actually Cover?
Hartz AI training for teachers in the UK covers the practical AI skills that make an immediate difference to daily school life. Sessions are not about theory or computer science. They focus on the tools teachers already encounter – ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini – and teach staff how to use them safely and effectively.
Core Skills Taught
A typical AI workshop for schools covers four areas. First, prompt writing for education tasks: crafting instructions that produce useful lesson plan drafts, differentiated resources and assessment rubrics. Second, AI-assisted feedback and marking support, where teachers learn to use AI as a first-pass tool while maintaining professional judgement.
Third, data safety and safeguarding – what information must never be entered into an AI tool, and how to write prompts that avoid exposing pupil data. Fourth, practical workflow integration, showing staff how to fit AI into existing routines rather than adding another task to the workload.
How Sessions Are Tailored to Education
Unlike generic corporate AI training, every Hartz AI session for education is built around the realities of school life. Examples use real education scenarios: writing end-of-year reports, drafting parent communications, creating SEND support materials, preparing assembly content.
The AI CPD programme for MATs builds consistency across multiple schools, ensuring every academy in a trust develops the same baseline AI capability. For schools that want to go deeper, our ChatGPT workshops for teams provide intensive hands-on practice with prompt engineering specific to education workflows.
Knowing what training covers is one thing. The bigger question for most school leaders is how to get staff who are nervous about AI to engage with it in the first place.
How Can Schools Build AI Confidence Across Their Teams?
A CooperGibson Research study for the DfE (opens in a new tab) found that 43% of teachers rate their AI confidence at just 3 out of 10. That is not a skills problem – it is a confidence problem. And it affects everyone from newly qualified teachers to experienced school leaders and governors.
Overcoming the 76% Training Gap
The AI skills gap among UK teachers is real: 76% have no formal training, yet over 60% are already asking for help applying AI to planning and support tasks. Hartz AI closes this gap with training designed for people who do not consider themselves technical.
We start with what staff already know – email, word processing, search engines – and build from there. Within a half-day session, teachers who arrived sceptical leave with three to five practical AI techniques they can use in their next lesson or planning period.
AI training for school leaders takes a different approach. Headteachers, deputies and trust executives need enough AI literacy to make good decisions about tools, policies and budgets – without becoming prompt engineers themselves.
Our leadership sessions cover AI awareness training for school governors, helping boards ask the right questions about AI adoption, data protection and safeguarding. Staff with no tech background find these sessions particularly valuable because they focus on judgement and oversight rather than technical operation.
Tailoring for Non-Technical Staff
AI training for school staff with no tech background follows a ‘see it, try it, use it’ structure. We demonstrate a task the teacher already does (writing a lesson plan, drafting a report). Then we show AI completing a first draft in under a minute.
Then every participant tries it themselves with guided support. By the end of the session, even the most cautious staff member has created something useful with AI and understands how to do it again independently.
Once your team has the confidence to use AI, the natural next question is: where will it make the biggest difference in daily school life?
Which AI Skills Save Teachers the Most Time?
The DfE has highlighted AI’s potential to reduce teacher workload in the UK, and the evidence supports this. AI marking tools report 65–90% time savings on assessment tasks (Olex.ai and Smartgrade customer data). But marking is just the start.
Lesson Planning and Resource Creation
AI lesson planning for UK teachers is the single most popular training request Hartz AI receives from schools. A well-crafted prompt can produce a differentiated lesson plan draft in 90 seconds – a task that typically takes 30–45 minutes manually.
The training teaches staff to review and refine AI outputs rather than accepting them wholesale, maintaining the professional judgement that Ofsted expects. Beyond lesson plans, teachers learn to generate quiz questions, vocabulary lists, comprehension tasks and revision materials tailored to their specific year group and ability level.
Admin and SEND Support
AI school administration in the UK covers the documentation that consumes teacher evenings and weekends: reports, policy drafts, meeting notes, communication templates. A single prompt can draft a parent letter in the school’s tone of voice, which the teacher then reviews and personalises in two minutes instead of writing from scratch in twenty.
AI for SEND support in schools is an area with particular promise. Training covers how to use AI to adapt resources for different learning needs, generate visual supports, simplify language in documents for EAL families and create individual education plan drafts.
The DfE has awarded innovation funding for AI tools that reduce the marking burden specifically, signalling government support for these applications. For schools ready to explore AI consultancy for education providers, Hartz AI offers readiness assessments that identify the highest-impact opportunities specific to your setting.
Individual teacher skills compound when they are part of a coordinated programme, and that is where MAT-level planning makes the difference.
How Should MATs Plan an AI Training Programme?
Multi-academy trusts face a unique challenge: they need consistent AI capability across multiple schools, each with different staff, cultures and priorities. A phased approach works best.
A Phased Approach for Multi-Academy Trusts
An effective AI training programme for MATs typically runs across three phases. Phase one is an AI readiness assessment for your school or trust – a half-day audit that maps current AI use, identifies quick wins, flags data protection risks and benchmarks staff confidence.
Phase two delivers tailored training sessions across the trust, starting with a pilot school and expanding based on what works. Phase three establishes internal AI champions – staff members trained to support colleagues, maintain prompt libraries and keep the trust’s AI practice current.
The DfE has set out six digital standards for schools to reach by 2030, and AI literacy is woven into several of them. Trusts that begin now build capability incrementally rather than scrambling to meet a deadline. Craig Hartzel founded Hartz AI specifically to help organisations like MATs build this kind of structured, practical AI capability.
Measuring Impact and Next Steps
An AI strategy for schools in the UK works when it ties training outcomes to measurable results: hours saved per teacher per week, reduction in admin time, staff confidence scores before and after. Hartz AI provides these metrics as standard.
For trusts considering whether to engage an AI consultant for schools, the readiness assessment is a low-commitment starting point that delivers immediate value regardless of what comes next. Explore our full range of AI solutions for education to see how training fits alongside consultancy and implementation.
Common questions
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Take the Next Step
Your school or trust’s AI capability should not depend on which staff members happen to be curious. A training needs assessment maps your team’s current skill levels and identifies the highest-impact use cases for your setting.