There is a lot of buzz about the enormous and compelling promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education. From supporting teachers by automating administrative tasks to creating personalised learning journeys, AI’s ability to complement conventional teaching has truly captured the attention of the education community.
However, with free tools and paid solutions flooding the market, evaluating which AI tools are right for your school requires careful consideration of the outcomes you are looking for. While “free” AI tools might seem appealing, they often come with trade-offs, such as smaller datasets, less sophisticated algorithms, and hidden costs like the potential misuse of student data.
Ultimately, the evaluation process must prioritise educational efficacy, safety, privacy, and long-term student outcomes over just the upfront costs. To help educators navigate this, we have outlined a six-point checklist based on core educational needs, and we’ve demonstrated how a comprehensive platform like Education Perfect (EP) addresses each critical area.
1. Ensuring High-Quality Responses and Minimising Bias
- The Standard: How does the AI tool ensure high-quality responses to minimise misinformation and biases?
- The EP Approach: Not all AI is built the same. EP draws on best-in-class AI technology, chosen for its proven accuracy and resistance to bias in educational contexts. To minimise the risk of errors, EP grounds the model with curriculum-aligned material and instructions. Furthermore, both students and teachers can flag AI-generated content they disagree with, enabling continuous improvement.
2. Providing Contextually Relevant Feedback
- The Standard: Does it provide contextually relevant feedback?
- The EP Approach: When students receive feedback in EP, it comes from models built on the platform’s own lesson content (not generic AI). Proprietary models are trained using EP’s curriculum-aligned lesson material. Importantly, EP has built guided educational experiences rather than exposing students to an open-ended chatbot.
3. Flexibility in Question Types
- The Standard: Does the AI system offer flexibility in handling a wide range of question types, including open-ended and complex tasks?
- The EP Approach: For students, EP’s AI-Powered Feedback tool provides instant feedback on supported extended response questions. For teachers, the AI integrated into EP Create helps quickly generate 5, 10, or 15 curriculum-aligned questions based on a chosen outcome, while allowing educators to include additional instructions or guidance.
4. Enabling Continuous Student Improvement
- The Standard: Is there an iterative feedback loop that allows for continuous student improvement?
- The EP Approach: EP’s AI-Powered Feedback Tool is designed to support more effective student learning as part of lessons and is not used for assessment. Teachers maintain full visibility of both student responses and the AI feedback provided, ensuring they remain central to the learning process and can help guide continuous refinement.
5. Handling Student Data and Ensuring Privacy
- The Standard: How does the tool handle student data and ensure privacy? Is data stored locally in compliance with national regulations?
- The EP Approach: At EP, student data is stored securely in data centres located in Australia and is never sent outside of Australia. EP does not use any student or teacher data to train its models, and no data is shared with model providers. Providing added peace of mind, EP’s feedback tool has successfully qualified to be part of the Safer Technologies for Schools (ST4S) Product Badge Program, which includes an AI Assessment.
6. Balancing Cost and Educational Value
- The Standard: What is the true cost of the AI tool, and how does it balance cost with the quality of educational outcomes?
- The EP Approach: Selecting the right tool is about understanding and quantifying the value it brings through high-quality, iterative learning tools. EP balances this by keeping the educator in the driver’s seat. For example, in EP Create, teachers have full control over the content. Nothing is student-facing until it’s triaged and assigned by the teacher.
The Bottom Line: The majority of educators care most about whether AI is safe and genuinely helps students learn. Education Perfect meets these rigorous criteria by focusing exclusively on educational outcomes and providing a suite of AI tools designed to enhance learning while prioritising privacy and high-quality outputs.
Experience the Power of EP AI
At Education Perfect, we believe AI should empower educators, not replace them. Our AI tools — like EP Create for rapid, curriculum-aligned lesson building and our AI-Powered Feedback Tool for guiding student growth — are built specifically for the classroom. With rigorous data privacy standards, ST4S certification, and a commitment to onshore data storage, EP provides an AI experience you can trust.
Interested in seeing how EP can safely integrate AI into your school’s learning environment? Start your free trial today!
Still comparing options? Download EP’s AI Evaluation Checklist to ensure your EdTech partner meets national safety and privacy standards.
