This roundtable aimed to highlight the growing interest among National Education executives in integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into their professions. The participants shared their experiences and insights on its potential and limitations.
Participants: Sabrina Caliaros (DRANE, Occitanie Academic Region), Cyril Mollera (IA-IPR for Mathematics and NSI), Dominique Quéré (IH2EF, National Education Executive Training Institute).
Moderator: Ludovic Delorme (Deputy Director of DRANE, Occitanie).
AI: A Tool for Educational Leaders
Task Automation and Increased Productivity
Educational leaders are already using generative AI to automate many administrative tasks, such as drafting notes, summarizing documents, and creating presentations. This automation allows them to focus on higher-value tasks, such as supporting teaching teams or designing projects.
The various testimonies highlighted several practical and effective uses of generative AI:
- Assistance with Writing: Overcoming « writer’s block » by generating ideas, introductions, or entire paragraphs.
- Enhancing Text Quality: Suggesting rephrasing, stronger arguments, or more effective sentence structures.
- Drafting Emails: Providing templates tailored to different situations (invitations, information requests, etc.).
- Document Summarization: Quickly summarizing lengthy documents (reports, articles, etc.), identifying key points, and facilitating overall understanding.
- Creating Visual Aids: Generating images to illustrate presentations without resorting to paid image banks.
- Organizing Information: Structuring and prioritizing information contained in numerous documents.
Beyond writing and summarization, AI is also a valuable tool for data processing. It can be used to visualize complex data through specialized programming languages. Additionally, it allows for the anonymization of documents containing sensitive information, enabling statistical analyses while respecting individuals’ personal data.
The main advantages highlighted include time and efficiency gains, creativity stimulation, and improved work quality.
However, the limitations and precautions mentioned include the need for critical review, the risk of biases, and the importance of human judgment. AI is a complementary tool that cannot replace human expertise and creativity. In short, AI can become a true assistant for professionals, helping them optimize their work and improve the quality of their outputs, but prior knowledge is still necessary to maintain some distance from the AI-generated results.
Enhancing Executive Training
The IH2EF has developed training tools to improve communication skills. By integrating AI-enhanced resources, particularly through virtual reality, executives can train in realistic situations, such as individual interviews with teachers. This system helps develop essential skills like compassionate communication and managing professional relationships, contributing to a more modern and effective training inspired by similar practices in other sectors like law enforcement and the SNCF (French National Railway Company).
AI also enables the automation of scientific monitoring, giving executives a better understanding of the constantly evolving educational environment. Conducting effective scientific and informational monitoring in the educational field has become essential but difficult to achieve manually. AI can automate this monitoring by optimizing information flows, such as RSS feeds, making resources more accessible and relevant to specific needs. This allows executives to stay informed about the frequent changes and reforms in the educational system, thereby facilitating the launch of new projects.
Data-Driven Management: A Central Issue
Data Analysis and Decision-Making
Educational data is a goldmine for managing a school and improving the quality of education. AI enables the analysis of large volumes of data to identify inequalities, success factors, and students’ specific needs. These analyses allow decision-makers to adjust their policies and practices accordingly.
At IH2EF, training modules are being developed to use artificial intelligence as a support tool for the strategic management of schools. The goal is to enable school principals to reduce and transform the massive amount of available data into useful and actionable information. This approach aims to strengthen the autonomy and responsibility of school principals by giving them the ability to process the necessary data themselves to collaborate effectively with their teams while exploring AI’s impact on their professions.
Predicting and Preventing School Dropout
The participants discussed a project aimed at developing predictive indicators of school dropout. This tool would help identify students most at risk and implement personalized support measures.
They are working on developing a tool using artificial intelligence to identify students at risk of dropping out. By analyzing a wide range of school data, they hope to detect early signs of difficulty and thus offer personalized support to these students. Although they have already achieved promising results, this project is still under development. They face challenges related to data quality and availability, as well as the complexity of AI models. Nevertheless, they are convinced that once finalized, this tool could help improve all students’ academic success.
The objective of this type of project is to better manage the issues they face by promoting not data-driven management but management with data, which is different.
AI in Human Resources Management
Automating HR Tasks
AI can automate certain human resources management tasks, such as sorting applications or managing emails, but careful consideration is needed for its use in human resources within education. Indeed, there are concerns about its role in more sensitive areas, such as recruitment or staff evaluation. While AI can offer technical support, it is crucial to maintain a human-centered approach, especially in teaching professions, where relationships and values remain essential. Caution is therefore required to avoid excessive reliance on AI while recognizing its potential benefits. Nevertheless, time savings on suitable tasks would allow HR services to focus on more strategic missions, such as recruiting specific profiles or developing staff skills.
Ethical Issues and AI Limits
The use of artificial intelligence in human resources raises significant ethical questions, particularly in recruitment and staff evaluation. While it can help automate certain repetitive tasks, there are concerns about the dehumanization of decision-making processes. The fear that AI might replace humans or make critical decisions poses ethical, political, and professional challenges. Moreover, the opacity of algorithms and potential biases necessitate increased vigilance and deep reflection to ensure that humans remain at the heart of educational professions.
Conclusion: A Profound Transformation of Education
Despite numerous cautious remarks minimizing their enthusiasm and the extent of AI use by executives, it was clear from this roundtable discussion that interest is strong, AI applications are already widespread, and new avenues are being explored with motivation. The integration of AI in National Education opens up new opportunities to improve the efficiency, quality, and equity of education.
However, everyone is well aware that this transformation must be carried out thoughtfully, taking ethical considerations into account and prioritizing a human-centered approach that focuses primarily on students’ needs and ensuring good working conditions for staff.
This summary was written by Stéphanie de Vanssay in honest association with AI through Dicte.AI, ChatGPT-4o, Perplexity, and Gemini tools.
