40 Years of BETT UK: How AI is Shaping the Next Era of Education

From the moment the event started, it was clear that BETT would be embracing one technology as the centrepiece of its massive edtech showcase: generative AI.

The advent of BETT’s 40^th anniversary has coincided with the acceptance and widespread adoption of AI tools in education. Whereas the previous two years’ BETT shows treated generative AI like a bag of magic tricks – with startups flaunting flashy GPT-based apps and big edtech players trying to coax people into using their AI-enhanced products – this year signalled a change.

Laura McInerney, Teacher Tapp CEO and BETT 2025 Arena host, stated that around two thirds of teachers in the UK now use AI regularly for their jobs. In Spring 2023, that number was closer to 20 per cent.

That shift in popularity and uptake was noticeable in both the plethora of stands for AI-based teaching and learning apps, as well as the speeches and panels at the event, not one of which omitted the phrase ‘AI’. But while safety and data protection – and on the extreme end, robots replacing teachers – were the old topics surrounding AI, this time speeches were about reducing workload, creating incredible new resources, and harnessing opportunities.

Both unfortunately and perhaps understandably, the government is still a step behind. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson delivered the official opening for the show, espousing a vision of future education “backed by evidence based tech and nurtured by inspiring teachers,” but then announced little other than new ‘AI safety expectations’.

There is potential in investments and partnerships the government has made, such as Oak National Academy’s AI assistant, DfE connect, the Edtech Evidence Board with the Chartered College of Teaching, and online AI-use resources from the Chiltern Learning Trust, but next to the manic development pace of tech giants and AI startups, these seem lacklustre.

While government announcements may have lacked the forcefulness needed for an “AI revolution”, the policy panel on Wednesday afternoon certainly packed a punch. In fact, Sir Nick Gibb, former schools minister took a few metaphorical punches from his counterparts on the panel, which included Lord Jim Knight, Rt Hon Robert Halfon, and Baroness Mary Bousted. They took aim at the ‘obese’ curriculum as a reason for difficulties in recruitment and retention of teachers.

Gibb rightly fired back that England has risen in the international educational rankings, and is now admired as a country that is doing education right. He said, “If you want to be a successful technician – whatever vocational group you want to go through, post-16 – you need the best academic education up to the age of 16 that you are capable of and that the school system can deliver… and that is what we have sought to deliver… so I don’t apologise for the fact that we have raised the game in terms of the academic ability of young people leaving our school system at 16.”

While all of the panellists did concede the importance of knowledge, they didn’t quite resolve the knowledge versus skills debate. However, one topic on which they unanimously agreed was how broken and over-medicalised the SEND system is, especially in terms of diagnoses. The number of children with EHCPs has increased by 140 per cent, and Bousted said that teachers feel they “can’t meet the needs” of SEND children in their classes at mainstream school.

Technology won’t be the sole cure for these systemic ills, but it will certainly help. AI-based tools like Magic School and TeachMate AI are already reducing workload for teachers who use them. Assistive technology is not only making curriculum more accessible for students with SEND; it’s also becoming commonplace and cheaply available.

And the best part of it all – the part that BETT showcased so well – is that we’re all in this together. Representation at the event was global. Countries ranging from Korea to Kazakhstan, the United Arab Emirates to the United States, China to Canada, were all hosting, attending, and promoting companies and programmes pioneering edtech solutions for education.

Luke Kemper is Insight and Intelligence Lead at HEP. He graduated from the University of Cambridge with an MPhil in Education, Globalisation and International Development. Before that, he worked for seven years as a university lecturer and high school teacher in China and Poland.