Five stories this week, one question: can you show me?

Five departments, one question

This week's school news came from five different directions. Funding, pupil data, teacher workload, European regulation and how schools judge new technology. Read together, they ask the school the same thing: can you show me?

Here is what each one said, and what a school is left holding.

The first £6,000

Every mainstream school in England is expected to cover the first £6,000 of a pupil's extra support from its own budget. Tes reported on 29 October that the DfE has consulted on raising that figure and on letting councils set local inclusion formulas. Whatever the number becomes, a school will have to show it has spent that much on a child before it can ask for more.

That means a record of what was provided, to which child, by whom, for how long. In many schools that record is a plan, a spreadsheet and someone's memory. It began life as a working note, and a working note is accurate on the day and very hard to add up in July.

Data that travels, and data that stays

Oxford's Department of Education and the DfE have started a six-month study into how pupil data could be used for AI research without harming the children it comes from. It will propose a governance framework and recommendations on how AI should be assured. Asking before the data moves is the right order.

A governance framework is how you manage data that has to travel. The simplest protection for a child's work is that it never leaves the building, and no framework replaces that option. It should be a choice a school can make, not only a baseline.

The hours nobody counts

Tes reported that the OBR projects mainstream school spending falling in real terms by about 0.7 per cent a year to 2031-32. These are projections, not confirmed cuts. The reforms ask mainstream schools to include more children with SEND, and if funding tightens, the hours for that work come from somewhere. Usually from people already staying late to write it up.

Nobody counts those hours. Until someone does, they cannot be argued for.

The date that moved

The EU has moved its high-risk obligations for AI in education to 2 December 2027. The UK is not bound by the EU Act directly, but a school will meet it through any supplier that sells into Europe. A later deadline is a reason for suppliers to wait. It is not a reason for schools to. Two questions can be asked today: how often did a teacher change what the tool drafted, and can we see that record without asking you?

Who judges whether a tool worked

The Education Endowment Foundation is paying between £15,000 and £25,000 for guidance on how to evaluate AI and edtech tools in schools. Applications close at 5pm on Friday 13 November. It will shape a £24 million programme across more than 1,000 settings.

Evaluating a tool is hard because the school that adopts enthusiastically is not the school that adopts reluctantly. For SEND it is harder again, because the pupils a tool helps most are the ones whose needs are least alike. An average tells you very little about the three children in front of you.

What connects them

Each story ends at a record. Spend, data, hours, drafts, outcomes. A school that can produce its own record, from the work it already does, can answer all five. A school that cannot is waiting to be surveyed.

What Aevum Foundry AI is working on

Aevum Foundry AI is a British company building local-first AI for UK schools, with SEND as the first lane we build for. It is in development. The tool drafts and the teacher approves everything before it goes anywhere. The model runs on the school's own hardware, so a child's work stays in the school.

We are working on this because of questions like the five above. If a school can see what was drafted, what a teacher changed and what was kept, it has the record. We would rather be measured properly than marketed well.

If you are a SENCO, a head or a business manager, we would like to hear which of these five lands hardest in your school.