The newly-appointed headteacher of a prestigious public School has called for more children to learn how use artificial intelligence (AI) to do their homework.

Vicky Bingham is soon to take the reins at North London Collegiate School (NLCS), an elite all-girls establishment which charges fees of almost £8,000 per term for senior pupils.

She said concerns about children cheating with AI on their homework have been ‘exaggerated’ and added that teachers should consider whether enough pupils are aware of how to use AI in the first place, The Sunday Telegraph reports.

Ms Bingham said: ‘One of the things I’m thinking of is surveying pupils to ask them how many of them genuinely do use ChapGPT, because my hypothesis would be that they’re not using it.

‘Some may be but others won’t be and actually therein lies the point, that we’ve got to teach them how to use it effectively.

‘So I think some of these fears about children just cheating using ChatGPT to do their homework, I’d say they’re exaggerated.’

The education leader added that teachers should ask if enough pupils know how to use AI ‘intelligently’ to assist their learning.

She explained her view that most adult jobs use an ‘iterative process’ to do things such as write essays and added that ChatGPT is ‘perfect’ for that.

Ms Bingham also said it feels as though schools are stuck in an ‘old-fashioned’ assessment system.

She shared her hopes that NLCS will create a research centre to explore new ways of assessing pupils, working alongside local state schools.

Her plan would entail tech companies, businesses, universities and both state and independent schools collaborating on creating a new format of digital assessments.

She said this would involve working with exam boards and other teaching bodies to embed technology in subjects where it has not already been done.

Ms Bingham vowed to look for technology companies who would be interested in her scheme to find out how young people will use AI in their future lives.

She pointed to a number of high-earning roles that use the technology, including ‘prompt engineers’ – who can collect £100,000 a year ‘asking ChatGPT the right questions’ which she dubbed to be ‘high-level thinking’.

Ms Bingham is not the first headteacher to espouse the benefits of AI for pupils, with another school head making headlines earlier this year after he suggested children should be taught to make AI robots their ‘servants.’

Head of exclusive Cottesmore School in West Sussex, Tom Rogerson, 48, says he’s already on the look out for an artificial intelligence expert to implant it into the curriculum and help prepare the future generation for a world in which AI features heavily. 

He told the Telegraph: ‘We need to prepare them for a life of using and living with AI and robots which have AI installed in them.

‘They’ve got to learn for it to be their benevolent servant.’

His comments echo those made by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week, who told journalists that he wanted to make Britain the global hub for ‘safe’ AI, saying the ‘extraordinary possibilities’ of the tech could transform public services and the economy, with AI as a ‘co-pilot’ in every job. 

Speaking this week, headteacher Rogerson said far from fearing the technology it should be used AI to spark creativity in students in lessons such as design and technology.

Older students should know how to write an essay without help, but might also use AI technology such as ChatGTP to help complete assignments, showing they can point the software is the right direction to create something worthwhile.

He added: ‘I think we need to embrace it, but we need to brace them for it, and get them to understand the moral and ethical implications of it, and get them to live alongside it.’ 

The new head of AI will be expected to show teachers how to reduce their workload – for example, using it to write lesson plans.

He says he learned about ChatGPT last year from his nephew and since then has been exploring Wonder, an app that creates generative art AI.

The description on the App store says: ‘Turn words into mesmerizing digital artworks! 

‘All you need to do is enter a prompt, pick an art style – and watch Wonder bring your idea to life in seconds!’ 

Mr Rogerson will be hosting a free AI ‘masterclass festival’ in September which will be open to all teachers – including those who teach at state schools. 

Each term of full boarding at Cottesemore for UK pupils costs parents £10,528, a cool £32,000 a year. 

Another leading independent school also waded into the arguments in favour of AI, saying they were looking to move away from homework essays due to the power of online artificial intelligence.

Staff at Alleyn’s School in southeast London are rethinking their practises after a test English essay produced by OpenAI bot ChatGPT was awarded an A* grade.

Since the futuristic technology was released in November last year, fears have grown in schools that it will make cheating easier than doing the work. 

The revolutionary tech can scan the web in real time to come up with eerily human-like text in response to any question – making it perfect for unsupervised homework.

The Times reported that to counter this Alleyn’s School – which has annual fees of £22,800 – will ask children to complete in-depth research in between lessons.

Speaking to the paper, Alleyn’s headteacher Jane Lunnon explained that their new focus on ‘flipped learning’ was an inevitable sign of the times due to the ‘seismic and game changing’ nature of AI.

She said: ‘I truly feel this is a paradigm-shifting moment. It’s incredibly usable and straightforward. 

‘However at the moment, children are often assessed using homework essays, based on what they’ve learnt in the lesson. 

‘Clearly if we’re in a world where children can access plausible responses … then the notion of saying simply do this for homework will have to go.

‘Homework will be good for practice but if you want reliable data on whether children are acquiring new skills and information, that will have to be done in lesson time, supervised.’

Lunnon continued to say that such was the sophistication of new AI technologies, children using them would not experience any failure meaning they would be less resilient.

Addressing her theories in a recent blog post, she warned: ‘School is where we learn what to do and how to do it. It’s also where we learn what not to do. What doesn’t work.

‘How to get things wrong and how to deal with that. We all know how important it is to learn to fail.

‘For us, ChatGPT will involve careful reflection about what we should be asking our pupils to do in school and in class and what they can do at home.’

A spokesman for Alleyn’s School told MailOnline: ‘Alleyn’s continuously explores and embraces new teaching and learning practices as part of our progressive educational ethos. 

‘And, while we were early adopters of the ‘flipped learning’ approach, homework and the opportunities it provides for deep independent learning and reflection, remains a core part of our holistic offer.’

It comes days after another AI scandal engulfed an Australian university. 

The student studying at University of New South Wales, confessed to using OpenAI’s ChatGPT to write their essay after a lecturer suspected it was AI generated. 

Professor of Artificial Intelligence Toby Walsh at the University of NSW said schools and universities are now frantically assessing how to stop students using the tech to cheat.

NSW, Queensland and Tasmania has already blocked access to ChatGPT on school internet networks to attempt to prevent students from cutting corners in assessments and exam essays. 

Prof Walsh believes the only answer may be to revert back to handwritten essays.

‘Banning access to websites is totally useless because kids are smart enough to work around it – they can use a VPN (virtual private network),’ he told The Australian,.

‘You’ve got to put them in a room with no (internet) access, with a pen and paper and no technology.

‘We can’t give students take-home lessons anymore.’

Earlier this year, it was reported that thousands of teachers are paying artificial intelligence computer software to write their end-of-year school reports for them.

More than 1,000 primary and secondary school teachers have already signed up to use Real Fast Reports, which creates a ‘totally personalised and unique’ report for each pupil at the touch of a button.