What Teachers Actually Need AI to Solve

‘If you could ask AI to solve any ONE persistent problem in your school, what would it be?’

This is a direct and timely question posed by Teacher Tapp to UK educators in a recent newsletter. It reflects a broader shift in how AI in education is being discussed, with increasing focus on training and responsible use. The results did not suggest any move towards replacing teachers or fully automated classrooms. Instead, what emerged was a clear snapshot of the daily pressures that continue to shape school life today.

From the responses Teacher Tapp shared, clear themes emerged: supporting pupils with additional needs and managing behaviour systems consistently and at scale. Another critical point raised from the survey is what teachers didn’t mention in their answers.

A Spotlight on SEND Workload

Teachers want AI to help manage the growing complexity of supporting learners with additional needs, from EHCP paperwork to provision plans. The scale of administrative work has grown significantly in recent years.

One primary school middle leader identified the following priority for AI:

‘Populating provision plans, EHCPS – all of the paperwork we have to fill out.’

Another middle leader from a secondary school said:

‘SEND support – resources and ideas for differentiation, but also help writing and updating SEND documentation.’

These SEND teachers are asking for help navigating systems that take more time and energy than they have to spare, and using AI not as a replacement, but to lighten their cognitive and administrative load.

TeacherMatic and SEND Support

You can tailor your TeacherMatic results by using tools such as the ‘Learning Activities’ generator to align with your students’ learning needs. Simply choose from a pre-populated list, as well as the option to describe any specific learning difficulties for optimal results:

Behaviour: Admin, Consistency and Lost Time

Alongside SEND support, behaviour management was a clear pain point, with strong consensus that the required paperwork, tracking and follow-up were burdensome.

One secondary middle leader shared:

‘Admin around behaviour, e.g tracking missed reflections, lates, truancy and notifying parents of detentions.’

Administrative tasks are not simple or straightforward when teachers only have access to inconsistent systems to perform these manual processes. In addition, there is the time required to follow up on individual behavioural incidents. These are hours that could otherwise be used for teaching, planning or intervention.

What is clear from the Teacher Tapp findings is that schools need access to tools that reduce friction and reconnect their staff with the work they are trained to do.

TeacherMatic and Behaviour Management

With TeacherMatic, you can access a range of AI-powered tools to support behaviour management-related tasks, including the ‘Learner Report Generator’. This enables educators to easily record and highlight individual learner strengths and areas of improvement in a clean report format that you can export as a PDF, Word or Google doc, or share directly to Google Classroom:

What Teachers Aren’t Asking For

While SEND support and behaviour management were found to be the key, resonating responses from the survey, Teacher Tapp addressed another critical point: ‘What’s notable is what doesn’t appear…’

This gap is just as revealing, as very few teachers have asked for AI to help them teach better lessons or replace marking. That’s not the help they see as a top priority. These insights also reveal that teachers need time, clarity and support structures that work at scale.

Teachers are seeking tools that integrate with what exists and already matters to them, rather than AI tools that try to ‘reinvent the wheel.’ They want robust reinforcements, not replacements.

What This Means for AI Tools in Schools

These insights from Teacher Tapp can be used to create a roadmap for how AI could meaningfully support all staff members in their settings, whether in schools, colleges or universities. For AI to deliver real value in education, support must focus less on promise and more on alleviating the very real pressure points.

There needs to be clearer direction for innovation, with clarity over complexity, relevance over reach and time saved over ‘tasks done.’

What Do You Need AI to Fix?

Are you a teacher, a Senior Leadership Team (SLT) member or an administrator?
What do you most need from an AI partner at the moment?

At TeacherMatic, our education and product experts continue to build AI tools that respond directly to the daily realities of school life that support all roles. We can only do this in a similar way to the Teacher Tapp survey by asking teachers what they need.

We regularly collaborate and test every tool we develop or enhance within our community of educators in secondary, FE and HE across the UK and worldwide. We wouldn’t be able to provide meaningful, time-saving and high-quality support without this strong, established connection.