Three ways AI could empower early-years professionals – and why it isn't already happening
www.nesta.org.uk/project-updates/three-ways-ai-could-empower-early-years-professionals-and-why-it-isnt-already-happening/
www.nesta.org.uk/project-updates/three-ways-ai-could-empower-early-years-professionals-and-why-it-isnt-already-happening/
Personalising professional development, automating administrative tasks, and using AI to tailor support for children have the most potential to assist practitioners in delivering high-quality education and care
At Nesta, one of the core pillars of our fairer start mission is to improve outcomes for children by supporting the early-years workforce. Practitioners have one of the most crucial jobs imaginable: nurturing young children and setting the foundation for lifelong learning. However, they are experiencing substantial challenges that prevent them from delivering the best support for children. With artificial intelligence (AI) already on the rise in primary and secondary schools, we’re running a project to explore how AI can empower early-years professionals to provide more high-quality and effective early childhood education and care experiences.
This project update outlines the three most promising matches we’ve found between what early-years professionals need and what AI can do. We also share what we’ve learned about why more innovation isn’t already happening in the sector.
Building from these insights, we’re now starting to test three ideas that could bring the benefits of AI to early-years professionals and address the barriers that prevent innovation from starting and spreading in the sector. If you’d like to be involved, read more about our next steps below and please get in touch.
Throughout this project, we’ve run a series of sprints to gain insight into pain points in the early years that could be relieved with AI technology solutions and understand the factors that affect the implementation of these tools in nursery settings. This has included several interviews with early-years innovators, early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector leaders and frontline professionals, academics and investors. We also undertook desk research, reviewing relevant reports and research on ECEC, AI, and sector news.
Early-years professionals consistently expressed the same three opportunity areas we believe to have the most potential for AI intervention.
Professional development plays a key role in empowering early-years professionals to best support children. While there is great practice in this sector, we believe there are also opportunities for improvement and potential for carefully considered uses of technology and AI to help more professionals access high-quality training.
An AI-powered CPD platform could tailor learning to individuals’ goals, provide on-demand access with bite-sized learning modules, or simulate conversations with teachers, colleagues and children to increase opportunities for reflective practice.
Nursery managers often find themselves bogged down in administrative tasks like record-keeping, reporting and funding, leaving less time for crucial activities like mentoring staff and engaging with children. Could AI be the much-needed life raft in this sea of paperwork? Some of the admin tasks we’ve discussed with early-years professionals are highly amenable to support from AI.
AI could automate repetitive tasks and simplify complex processes, for example generating reports or pre-filling funding applications. This would free up valuable time for managers to focus on the parts of the job they love most: supporting staff and creating a nurturing environment for children.
Every child is unique, and understanding their developmental stage is essential for providing effective support. AI could help practitioners create truly personalised learning journeys for each child.
Consider an AI system that gathers data from multiple sources, provides a holistic view of each child's development and suggests targeted activities and interventions. This level of personalisation could help ensure every child gets the support they need to thrive and reach their full potential.
Through our exploration, we identified several significant barriers to the adoption and development of technology in the early years.
The early-years system is under immense pressure. With limited funding and time, nurseries must focus on meeting the daily needs of children in their care, leaving little room for trying new, especially unproven, products.
Nursery settings often lack the technology and infrastructure needed to support AI. Variable digital skills, limited access to devices, and patchy internet connectivity hinder the adoption of new technologies.
The UK nursery market is fragmented, with many small enterprises and different types of organisations. This fragmentation makes it challenging for innovators to scale their solutions effectively. Investment in new technology solutions for early-years education is limited, both from the commercial and public sectors. The fragmented market and limited ability of nurseries to pay for solutions make the sector less attractive to investors.
The combination of entrepreneurial skill and deep technology expertise is scarce amongst innovators, which particularly impacts opportunities for complex tech development. Additionally, greater technology expertise among early-years practitioners could facilitate the adoption of innovative solutions.
Focusing on AI-powered technology for use by professionals, rather than use by children, reduces the level of risk and concern around safety and regulation. However, safeguarding, data protection, and trustworthiness of new providers in this space are important to factor into adopting AI.
We’ve developed a range of ideas and opportunities that respond to the insights and learning above. These ideas span the different roles Nesta could play to galvanise AI development for the early years, from building new products to enabling practitioners and developers to innovate. Our starter spaces include:
Imagine bite-sized, AI-powered training sessions designed to fit seamlessly into a nursery professional’s day. This opportunity explores a CPD platform that offers personalised, scenario-based learning – empowering professionals to tackle real work challenges and improve outcomes for children.
A matchmaking service that connects early-years settings with cutting-edge technology innovators. By enabling collaborative testing and piloting of AI solutions, this brokerage fosters partnerships that address real challenges across the sector and helps build an enabling environment for impactful innovation to thrive.
A development programme that supports early-years professionals with deep expertise in the problems to solve and an entrepreneurial ambition to create and scale new solutions. By providing product development and commercial expertise, this programme aims to increase technology and AI skills in the workforce and turn practitioners’ ideas into impactful, scalable solutions.
We can’t create long-term impact in the early years alone, so we’re looking for people from a variety of backgrounds, viewpoints and perspectives to join us in building and testing these innovations. The starter spaces above represent our initial ideas on how we could create impact, but we know that they could be wrong. There are a multitude of other impactful ways we could create lasting change, so we need others to join us on this journey.
If any of the above sounds of interest, and you want to be part of this journey, please get in touch.
