ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In this episode live from the Festival of Education at Wellington College 2026, host Daniel Emmerson speaks with Grainne Hallahan, Head of Community at Teacher Tapp. Grainne shares unique data-driven insights into how UK teachers feel about artificial intelligence, the shifting patterns in subject-specific AI adoption, and why asking precise, time-bound questions is essential for capturing classroom realities. She also offers practical guidance for school leaders on policy formulation, teacher anonymity, and effective survey design.
Key Topics & Timestamps
00:00 Friday Behaviour Questions
00:20 Introducing Grainne Hallahan
01:49 What Is Teacher Tapp
03:10 Designing Daily Questions and Finding Insights
06:38 Panel Randomisation and Response Experiments
10:22 Longitudinal Data and Behaviour Tracking
11:13 Tracking Teacher AI Adoption Trends Over Time
12:51 The 10 Percent Non-User Group and Environmental Concerns
13:50 Subject Trends and Primary vs Secondary Usage
16:42 Sharing Findings with Policymakers and the Media
18:36 Teacher Motivation and Anonymity
23:21 School AI Policies and Future Research Areas
24:54 Tips for School Leaders Writing Effective Surveys
Takeaways & Highlights
Data-Driven Teacher Voice: Daily three-question surveys sent to a re-weighted panel of 10,000 teachers allow Teacher Tapp to capture real-time classroom sentiment and represent the profession accurately across government consultations and media broadcasts.
Shifting AI Adoption Patterns: The proportion of teachers who have never used AI for schoolwork has fallen to under 10%. Primary teachers initially led adoption for generating exemplars and short-form questions, while maths teachers have seen a major turnaround since tools gained image and diagram generation capabilities.
Environmental and Ethical Concerns: Environmental impact has emerged as a primary reason why the remaining minority of teachers choose to abstain from using AI tools in their professional duties.
Anonymity Drives Honest Reporting: True data separation and absolute respondent anonymity are vital for understanding shadow AI usage and unearthing candid feedback that school policies might otherwise mask.
Designing Actionable School Surveys: When surveying staff, school leaders should restrict questions to recent, specific timeframes (such as "this week"), keep options below ten, and eliminate unnecessary verbiage to obtain clear, reliable responses.
Resources Mentioned
Teacher Tapp: Daily survey app for educators in England. https://teachertapp.com/
Guest: Grainne Hallahan (Head of Community, Teacher Tapp)
Grainne Hallahan is a teacher-turned-journalist who now sets the questions at Teacher Tapp. She is interested in all things education, but gets particularly excited about what keeps teachers teaching, and how changes to education policy can make a difference to those doing the hard work in the classroom and school leadership.
