Move beyond marketing claims to understand the real educational or operational benefit of an AI tool for your school or trust.

Identify critical safeguarding, data protection, and security questions before implementation, ensuring your pupils stay safe and compliant.

Involve the right people, DSLs, DPOs, IT leads, and curriculum leaders, at the right time, creating a proportionate record of decisions and risk management.

Why This Matters Now

AI is moving quickly from individual experimentation to formal decisions about products, platforms and school-wide use. As the market becomes more crowded, schools and trusts need a clear way to distinguish between compelling demonstrations and tools that are genuinely appropriate for their pupils, staff and context. The questions are broader than whether a tool can generate useful content. Leaders need to consider educational value, safeguarding, data protection, copyright, accessibility, security, staff confidence and the practical work of implementation. These decisions also need to remain under review as products, models, supplier terms and school use cases develop. The Department for Education has strengthened the framework available to schools, including product safety standards for generative AI, guidance on data protection and safe use, and links within Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 to AI-related safety and legal responsibilities. This makes it a good moment to establish a proportionate, repeatable procurement process that helps schools innovate with care and clarity. A strong procurement process does not slow useful innovation. It helps schools focus time and investment on tools that are more likely to be safe, workable and educationally worthwhile.

What is included

A compact checklist covering five key areas of AI procurement. Prompts for deciding whether to approve, pilot, pause or decline a tool. Links to relevant DfE, ICO and NCSC guidance. A format suitable for use by an individual school, central trust team, governing body or project group.

Ready to Make Smarter AI Decisions?

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