The path to AI empowerment

Educators, policymakers and providers offered their perspectives on the next steps for AI in education, not just what AI can do but what it should do at a Westminster Education Forum.

Ledetta Asfa-Wossen

24 September 2025

What is AI empowerment? How do we stop AI from worsening inequalities? Why do we need AI in classrooms? How can we keep children safe online? It could have been a five-day summit as experts did their best to cover it all in a single morning.The first session took a look at priorities for AI rollout in schools and colleges and covered topics such as safety, effectiveness and best practice.First up was Dr Caitlin Bentley, senior lecturer in AI Education at King's College London and deputy chair skills pillar at Responsible AI UK who explored initiatives helping to make AI safe, inclusive and beneficial to all.

Building empowered AI users

“We need to focus on digital empowerment and to me that goes way beyond AI literacy. It’s about what is needed for AI to really improve learning, education, our lives and society,” said Bentley.“When we think of ensuring AI is beneficial for all, we still have a long way to go in terms of changing the AI technologies themselves as well as how we use them. We need to think about how we come together as governments, communities, educators, schools, parents and students – as everyone needs to be involved in these conversations.”Bentley explored the purpose and impact of AI and talked about the need for active involvement to ensure systems are safe and useful for both students and educators alike.“When it comes to schools and institutions, strong leadership is vital,” said Bentley. She noted that education institutions can do these three vital things to facilitate AI empowerment. Firstly – adopt purpose-driven pedagogical principles. “We need to teach students to question answers, understand multiple epistemologies and their own position in the world – with AI as an area for exploration rather than to provide the answers.”Secondly, said Bentley, “we need to invest in educators and ensure our teachers foster digital empowerment in order to prepare students for an AI dominated future. To me, AI simply reinforces pedagogical approaches, good or bad, but changing pedagogical practice is a bigger challenge than just helping teachers to use AI or to adapt their assessments.”Thirdly, she urged all stakeholders to strengthen AI and online protections holistically. “We have the online safety act and students, parents, teachers and schools all need to be involved. The best protection will be education that is meaningful to our diverse students.”Bentley warned about the harms of AI and social media and how AI empowerment offers the most promising solution. “Empowerment-based education for our diverse students offers the greatest protection because it enables students to take ownership and control over how AI impacts their learning and future careers.”She went on to reinforce the importance of independent and critical thinking which often comes up in discussions around AI but added that empowerment education views critical thinking differently.“It shouldn’t just be, AI is there – now we need to learn it. We need to know whose knowledge is privileged in these models and algorithms. What is accurate, how it can benefit and harm us and how best to use it. Right now, there aren’t reliable rules because technology is advancing so quickly. Empowerment education positions students as agents of change and independent thinkers who work well with others, and are sensitive to others.”AI empowerment is not only about using AI tools but understanding our motives and dependence on it too.

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Implementing AI in schools

Later that day, educators and experts in the field of AI shared their considerations and processes for implementing AI.Joanne McGovern, curriculum manager at Engineering Hub, South West College, talked about the importance of taking a step back and doing the strategic planning.At South West College, her team are currently building confidence with AI through AI taster sessions, and creating an AI supportive environment by letting people learn from each other. At the centre of that is ethics, values and responsibility. “We’re taking a very balanced approach to ensure we’re not outsourcing our thinking, and acting transparently,” she said.McGovern urged schools considering the wider use of generative AI to ask a stream of questions – like why do we need to embrace this now? Can we afford not to invest in this? What happens if we don’t? What is the opportunity to develop our students with new skills for the future? What is the purpose and context for our AI use?She challenged educators to be open and reflective about AI use and the ways in which it helps them, and to be crystal clear on the end goal. “Always go back to your why,” she added.

Why AI matters in the classroom

Richard Slade, executive headteacher at Plumcroft Primary School in London, as well as educators and experts from the University of Edinburgh to Century Tech presented their experiences of implementing AI in teaching and learning.Slade discussed his varied school demographic at Plumcroft and universal budget concerns for schools and how AI is driving efficiency for teachers and some success for students.Examples included reducing teacher time spent on professional tasks such as planning, preparation and assessment, to providing high quality content that can be better interacted with.For learners, Slade described multiple powerful benefits at primary school level. These include helping to identify gaps in learning and creating personalised learning journeys.Slade also touched on how AI is accelerating learning in a more agnostic way, irrespective of where a child is or their chronological age, to achieve and exceed age-related outcomes, as well as providing teachers with detailed diagnostics to help support students.Jonathan Wharmby, computer science teacher at Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School in Liverpool, highlighted how AI is supporting adaptive learning and critical thinking at his school, as well as reducing teacher workloads and helping to generate sample answers and feedback.“AI potentially gives every teacher a teaching assistant in their back pocket. We also have the ability for every student to have a personalised tutor in their pocket. That is something we can't shy away from – we need to focus on that and take this opportunity,” said Wharmby.While attendees agreed that AI technologies bring immense opportunities they also acknowledged it introduces significant risks, risks that are growing in both scale and complexity.“We don’t want children to fear AI – but we want them to pause, question and analyse it,” said Caroline Allams, CEO of Natterhub, echoing Bentley’s earlier talk on AI empowerment.

Key points on AI safeguarding from Caroline Allams

Broaden the conversation about online safety. It shouldn't be an isolated topic. It's an essential extension of our broader responsibility to help children develop digital resilience and critical thinking
Explicitly teach children about AI. That should include its capabilities and limitations
Critical questioning needs to become a habit. Encourage children to ask: why am I seeing this content? Who created it? Could this message, or image, be fake or harmful?
We need support and training for teachers. Teachers need high quality, practical professional development to navigate this evolving landscape confidently, and they must feel equipped to answer challenging questions and establish guidelines on acceptable AI use, how to use these tools safely, and how to report concerns or suspicious content.
Online safety is a collective responsibility. We must better engage parents and communities to play a role in reinforcing safe habits at home and beyond.
Everyone should understand how data can be used and potentially misused. Children need to learn how to keep their data private and understand what is appropriate to share and what is personal. Data privacy should be taught early.
We need to foster a culture of digital citizenship. One that is linked to values of respect, responsibility and resilience.

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