AI is moving into UK education faster than most schools and trusts can assess it. We help you find where it fits across teaching, assessment and the back office, then build the bespoke systems the work calls for. Across independent schools, multi-academy trusts, FE colleges, university departments and edtech vendors.
OpenKit helps UK schools, multi-academy trusts, FE colleges, university departments and edtech vendors work out where AI fits across teaching, assessment and the back office, and builds bespoke systems where the work calls for it. Delivery is teacher-supervised by default and designed to help meet DfE Generative AI product safety expectations, KCSIE 2025, the ICO Children’s Code and JCQ assessment integrity guidance. OpenKit holds ISO 27001, ISO 9001, and Cyber Essentials certifications.
OpenKit is a UK AI consulting firm that helps schools, multi-academy trusts, FE colleges and university departments work out where AI fits and builds bespoke systems where the work calls for it. OpenKit delivers AI audits and teacher-supervised builds for assessment support, lesson planning, private knowledge over school materials, and admin and safeguarding triage, designed to help meet DfE product safety expectations, KCSIE 2025 and the ICO Children’s Code. OpenKit has ISO 27001, ISO 9001, and Cyber Essentials certifications and works with clients across the United Kingdom from a base in Cambridge.
Four patterns we see in every education audit, from a single independent school to a thirty-school trust. Each one is also why most off-the-shelf edtech rollouts stall before anyone is willing to sign them off, regardless of who in the team is running the work.
JCQ recorded 1,125 GCSE and A-level disqualifications and around 2,000 mark deductions for AI malpractice in 2025, with sanctions reaching multi-year debarment. Any system that touches assessed work has to keep the student declaration trail intact and stand up to a JCQ inquiry, which rules out most tools a teacher or exams officer gets pitched.
Around 60% of UK teachers report some generative AI use, mostly on personal accounts outside any school data perimeter. A third of schools still have no official AI policy, so the liability sits on the individual and leadership has no visibility on what has been pasted into a public model.
KCSIE 2025 paragraphs 140-143 direct schools to factor AI into filtering, monitoring and safeguarding risk assessment, and to weigh every AI tool against the DfE product safety expectations. A rollout that cannot evidence this does not get past the designated safeguarding lead.
The EU AI Act Annex III classifies systems that evaluate learning outcomes, decide access to education, or monitor candidates during tests as high-risk, with full obligations from 2 August 2026 and a Fundamental Rights Impact Assessment falling on the institution that deploys them.
These are the areas that come up most often in education audits. We don't ship them off the shelf. Every implementation is shaped to your school, your systems, and what is safe to defend to a governing body or an inspector.
Typed and handwritten responses in, rubric-aligned feedback out, with a moderation trail a centre can stand behind at a JCQ inquiry. The teacher signs every grade. We built this shape with the Department for Education as Rubrical, then build the same against your subject and your mark schemes.
Planning assistants that draw on your schemes of work, exam-board specifications and reading lists rather than the open web, with central control over what gets indexed. EEF trials found structured generative AI cut planning time by around 31% while teachers kept ownership of every plan.
Parent-comms drafting, attendance-pattern summaries and cover scheduling support, all supervised and routed to the right person when something needs a human. Safeguarding signals are surfaced for the designated lead to act on. We do not build automated safeguarding decisions.
Assistants that answer from your own schemes of work, policies, KCSIE guidance, governor packs and exam-board specifications, and cite where every answer came from. Runs inside your tenant so the content and the queries never leave it, and learner data never trains a model.
A teacher-supervised marking assistant. It reads typed and handwritten responses, drafts feedback aligned to the mark scheme, and queues every grade for a teacher to sign. We built this with the Department for Education as Rubrical, and we shape work like this around your existing workflow rather than ship it off the shelf.
Rubrical is the worked example of how this fits UK education. The model never publishes a mark, never sends a parent comm, never updates a record on its own. The teacher of record signs every output, the answers are cited against the school's own scheme of work, and learner work never trains a model.
Most engagements start with the audit. What follows depends on what it surfaces. Many teams move into a transformation block on their existing Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams stack, some take on a senior AI lead to keep the work moving, and a few commission a bespoke build where nothing off-the-shelf will fit.
A fixed-fee, fixed-scope audit of where AI fits across teaching, assessment and the back office. Ends with a written report you can take to a board or a governing body, and a prioritised rollout plan.
A block of configuration, build and training on your existing Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams stack. The team that runs the audit is the team that ships the work, so nothing gets lost between findings and the staff who use it.
A senior OpenKit engineer becomes part of your central team. Not an advisor at steering meetings, an engineer owning model evaluation, the DfE and JCQ-facing paperwork, and the next term's roadmap. Rolling arrangement, cancel anytime.
For work that goes beyond configuration. A marking platform shaped to your subjects, a tutor grounded on your curriculum, a private knowledge engine over your policies and schemes of work. Scoped after the audit, since the scope depends on what the audit surfaces.
We build on the systems your school already runs. No rip-and-replace. Below is a sample of what we routinely integrate with. We work across many other systems too, so bring us your stack.
A sample of recent work. Outcomes described without internal artefacts.
What we hold and what we operate to. We surface gaps and propose mitigations. We are not a regulatory certifying body, and the designated safeguarding lead keeps safeguarding ownership.
Information security management. Independent third-party audited.
Quality management. Independent third-party audited.
UK NCSC baseline cyber-hygiene certification.
Data processing register maintained per ICO guidance.
We hold ISO 27001, ISO 9001, and Cyber Essentials certifications independently, and operate to UK GDPR. We are not a notified body and we do not self-certify against DfE product safety expectations, KCSIE, the ICO Children’s Code, JCQ assessment integrity or the EU AI Act. Delivery is designed to help your school meet its own obligations under those regimes. The designated safeguarding lead keeps safeguarding ownership, and we work alongside your data protection and safeguarding leads on alignment and assessment.
Start with the audit. Fixed fee, fixed scope, a written report you can take to a board or a governing body, and a prioritised plan for what to build first.
Rethinking What's Possible with AI.
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