eqAIte.org

The origins of EQAITE

Welcome to new subscribers, This is the second in a series of blogs/newsletters from the EQAITE team. This post looks at why we have created EQAITE and how it came to be.

EQAITE began as a response to a growing challenge in UK education — the pressure to adopt AI tools without the time, training or strategic lens to do so safely. While some schools were powering ahead, others were rightly cautious, balancing workload, safeguarding and equity concerns with little support from policy or infrastructure.

The project was born from conversations between three educators — Ellie Overland, Jess McBeath and myself, Alan Harrison — who recognised the urgent need for a structured, values-aligned way to evaluate AI tools in education. Drawing on classroom experience, safeguarding expertise and curriculum design, they developed the EQAITE framework: a document and associated digital application that helps schools assess AI tools across six key domains, from pedagogy and ethics to cost and sustainability.

EQAITE doesn’t promote AI adoption. It supports informed decision-making. Whether your setting is ready to embrace AI or chooses to opt out entirely, the framework helps you ask better questions — not just about what a tool can do, but whether it aligns with your principles, priorities and pupils.

The framework is already being used to shape CPD, guide strategy and support schools in making confident, evidence-informed choices. It’s not a checklist — it’s a conversation starter. Try the tool here, get involved by emailing us info @ eqaite dot org, or subscribe to this blog below.

In the next blog, I’ll explain how the EQAITE framework draws together guidance from across the education and technology sectors — policy papers, safeguarding protocols, curriculum reviews, ethical AI research, and classroom practice — into one coherent tool. Instead of asking educators to navigate a maze of disconnected advice and competing constraints, we’ve done the legwork. The framework distils these sources into a practical structure, helping you make confident, values-led decisions about AI adoption in your setting.