Executive Summary
This written evidence is submitted on behalf of a multidisciplinary University of Southampton team, whose findings draw on the Talking Itchen outreach project, an eight-session programme in which three PhD students worked with nineteen home-schooled neurodivergent children aged seven to fifteen. Spanning the disciplines of AI, electronics, and law, the project centred on river conservation activities in Southampton and gave the University team direct, hands-on experience of the practical realities of working with neurodivergent children, as well as the considerable challenges parents face in delivering a high-quality home education. The evidence addresses four key questions concerning AI and EdTech in home education, with particular focus on neurodivergent learners, examining both the regulatory landscape and the practical ways in which artificial intelligence can be harnessed to support them.
The core finding is that AI holds significant potential to personalise and enrich learning for this group, but that this potential is currently undermined by three structural gaps: the absence of AI guidance in existing Department for Education materials for home-educating parents; the lack of any funding framework to support AI access or parental training; and the influence of parental attitudes, including misinformation exposure and concerns about sustainability, on children's engagement with these tools. The Talking Itchen project demonstrated that contextualised, community-based AI introduction, which is grounded in purposes children already care about, is considerably more effective than abstract technology first approaches, and that neurodivergent learners respond particularly well to self-directed, interest-led environments of this kind.
The authors make four principal recommendations:
- Review the Departments’ of Education Guidance for Parents to include a section of artificial intelligence, and the scope and limitations of its use in home-schooling practices. A better understanding of how parental attitudes towards AI, including justice sensitivity, sustainability concerns, and prior misinformation exposure, shape children’s engagement with these tools is needed - alongside practical guidance on how families can critically evaluate and constructively adopt AI in their home-schooling practice.
- Revision of the funding guidance for local authorities is needed. If parents are expected to receive training on AI, it should be defined how they can access one, and who would be responsible for developing the curriculum, organising, and funding of such training. Another issue arises with the use of AI for generation of personalised teaching materials, and how the funding for such purposes should be treated
- Revision of the Guidance for Parents, where the sections of a case studies with the community building may be presented. The communities of EHE members can be a supportive group and help children to socialise outside of schooling facilities, thus, having successful case studies, may motivate other groups to be established. By bringing the examples of community groups that formed around local and/or nature conservation practices, the government can provide the showcases, where the education is combined with the multidisciplinary hands-on experience of local projects, which complement both home-schooling and the local community.
- Creation of research on how AI can complement the quality of education for neurodivergent children by tailoring exercises and contexts to their needs can be the supportive guidance for both schools and home-schooling practices. It is also essential to highlight the need to balance between adoption of new technology and sustainability of utilising these resources - understood here as multi-dimensional, encompassing the environmental cost of running AI tools, the economic accessibility of such tools for families with limited resources, and the long-term pedagogical viability of integrating AI into home-schooling practice.
Contributors:
Dr Jan Buermann, Enterprise Fellow within the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, whose work sits at the intersection of sustainability, artificial intelligence, and marine governance
Ms Angelina Spilnyk, PhD researcher within the SustAI Centre for Doctoral Training.
Mr Andrei Sontea is a PhD Student within the SustAI Centre for Doctoral Training, with a research focus on AI for Biodiversity.
Mr Yaseen Mohammed Osman, PhD Student at the University of Southampton, with a research focus
on investigating novel techniques to enable lighter and faster large language models (LLMs)
to run on edge devices for a more sustainable, democratised, private and safer futures.
Mr Tommy Tham, Enterprise Fellow, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton.
