AI in Education Conference - Wednesday 14 October 2026 (The Wellcome Collection, Euston Road, London)

Time

Session

08:30 – 09:15

Arrival, Registration and Refreshments

09.15 - 09.25

Welcome and Introductions

Speakers:

Pete Goodyer - CEO, Bede’s Group and Chair, HMC AI/EdTech Working group

09.25 -10.55

Keynote 1: Educators’ AI Playbook Live: From Encouragement to Expectation

An evidence and behaviour-led approach to integrating AI safely, responsibly and effectively across your school

AI adoption in schools is moving beyond experimentation. The question is no longer whether staff should be encouraged to explore AI, but how schools create the conditions, expectations and governance structures that allow AI to be used well.

In this special keynote Mark Orchison, Dan Fitzpatrick and Julia Pidduck will explore how schools can move from isolated AI enthusiasm to whole-school implementation.

The first part of the session will set out an evidence and behaviour-led model for AI integration: how schools can support staff adoption, define expectations, build confidence, manage risk and move beyond the small group of early adopters who naturally run towards new technology.

The second part will follow the familiar Educators’ AI Playbook format, with Dan, Julia and Mark discussing the practical realities of AI in schools: what is changing, where the risks sit, how vendors are evolving, what governance should look like, and how schools can use the Diamond Formation to align academic ambition with safeguarding, privacy, technology and leadership accountability

Speakers:

Dan Fitzpatrick, Founder, The AI Educator

Mark Orchison, Founder and CEO, 9ine

Julia Pidduck, Senior Consultant – Data Protection, 9ine

10:55 – 11:00

AI presentation from sponsor

11:00 – 11:30

Refreshment Break

11.30 – 12.00

Case Study 1: Beyond the Prompt: Building an AI Curriculum for Judgement, Creativity and Agency

What should pupils be able to understand, question and do in a world shaped by AI? This session explores how to build a coherent curriculum that connects practical skills with critical thinking, ethical judgement and purposeful creativity.

Drawing on Haileybury’s Digital Innovations course, Tom Wade will examine how pupil voice, clear principles and a planned learning sequence can help move pupils from AI literacy towards fluency: the ability to choose, use, evaluate and challenge AI, including knowing when not to use it. Examples will range from attention-grabbing ‘Do now’ activities and interactive investigations to a developing leadership and enterprise project in which pupils investigate a school climate issue, test a technology-supported solution and pitch a practical next step.

Delegates will leave with a practical approach to curriculum planning, examples they can adapt, and an assessment lens that makes pupils’ thinking, choices and improvement visible.

Speaker: Tom Wade, Director of Digital Innovation and Enterprise, Haileybury

12.00 – 12.30

Case Study 2: What Are We Actually Assessing? Rethinking Assessment in an AI-Enabled School

When AI can write the essay, analyse the sources, create the presentation, or produce the code, what are we actually assessing? This session explores how schools can rethink assessment when AI can increasingly complete many of the tasks traditionally used as evidence of learning.

Moving beyond ‘AI-proofing’, the session will discuss how assessment can place greater emphasis on what pupils know, how they apply it, the judgements they make and their ability to explain and defend their thinking. It will explore where AI should be restricted, permitted, or deliberately incorporated into assessment. The session will also consider the wider implications for curriculum leadership: how schools review existing assessment models, reduce low-value practices, and develop a coherent institutional approach.

Delegates will leave with practical principles and a framework for identifying where assessment needs to change, and what stronger evidence of learning might look like.

Speaker: Luke Harris, Director of Digital Strategy, Bloxham School

12.30 – 13.00

Case Study 3:  Thinking more deeply about AI bias

Anyone working with AI knows it can produce biased outputs. The failure of AI to reflect certain protected characteristics, for example, is well understood. In this workshop, we will (1) identify more subtle ways that AI bias could be affecting our students, in and out of the classroom and (2) identify where responsibility for AI bias sits. 

Speakers:  Clare Jarmy, Director of Innovation at the Haberdashers' Elstree Schools

13.00 - 13.50

Lunch and opportunity for networking and discussion

13.50 – 14.10

Case Study 4: Innovation in delivering staff training around AI

Speaker: Sachin Choithramani, Director of Innovation and Development, Bede’s School

14.10 –

14.40

Case Study 5: Saving 500 teacher hours a year: Using AI to process bulk data compliantly 

This presentation will show how Bedford Modern School have used a bespoke AI report proofreading app to process thousands of school reports. Most importantly, we will talk through how we have done this in a compliant manner, without compromising data security.

Speaker: James Potter, AI Lead, Bedford Modern School

14.40 – 15.00

Refreshment Break

15.00 16.00

Keynote:  From School to University and Beyond: Educating for an AI-Enabled Future

AI is rapidly changing not only how students learn, but the capabilities they will need as they move from school into university and an increasingly AI-enabled workplace. This closing keynote explores how universities are responding to these changes, drawing on the University of Leicester’s strategic approach to AI, and considers what universities will increasingly expect of incoming students and what it means to be genuinely AI-capable rather than simply able to use AI tools.

The session will consider how education can develop students who can work effectively with AI while retaining the knowledge, critical thinking, creativity and judgement needed to challenge its outputs and take responsibility for their own work. Looking beyond AI adoption, it will consider the wider transformation of education, assessment and institutional practice, and how schools and universities can together prepare young people for an AI-enabled future.

Speaker: Professor Dirk Schaefer, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Head of College, University of Leicester

16.00

Closing Remarks and Depart

Speakers:

Pete Goodyer - CEO, Bede’s Group and Chair, HMC AI/EdTech Working group

Becca Barnett - Education Officer, HMC