Discovery Trust educators reclaim their weekends using Microsoft 365 Copilot

Short on time? Listen to the key highlights of Discovery Trust's transformation

A strategic rollout equips school leaders to harness AI for greater efficiency

While charting a path forward through these challenges, Discovery Trust knew that whatever technology they embraced needed to be unified, secure, and purposeful. The trust's existing Microsoft infrastructure, built through their Showcase Schools program, provided the foundation. But the real breakthrough came with the introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot. 

"Our CEO is absolutely behind digital. He drives it," Stone says. “For his staff and for the employees, and for pupils as well, he understands what's coming in the future. We know that these are skills that we're all going to need very quickly because things are changing so much, and we're in a in a time of historic change, aren't we?”

Microsoft is committed to creating responsible AI by design, guided by principles of fairness, safety, privacy, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. Understanding the importance of these principles, Discovery Trust developed a strategic three-year deployment plan for Microsoft 365 Copilot rather than rushing implementation. Year One would focus on head educators, central staff, and deputies—ensuring leaders understood both the technology and its responsible use before expecting other educators to embrace it.

"We wanted them to really understand the power and the efficiency of what this can provide for them and for their staff," Stone explains. “So that’s when they do lesson observation and reviews because they really need to see it from the perspective of pupils and educators in the classroom."

To ensure successful adoption, Discovery Trust invested in comprehensive training that went beyond basic features to develop a deeper understanding of Copilot's capabilities and potential applications across different roles. The trust implemented robust measurement systems to track adoption rates and usage patterns among staff members, enabling targeted support where needed. Through careful data analysis and business impact assessments, Discovery Trust could quantify the tool's effectiveness and identify opportunities to maximize its value across the organization.

Sparking classroom innovation while reinventing assessment

The impact of Microsoft 365 Copilot implementation exceeded even the most optimistic projections. With just 59 initial licenses, the trust achieved a 100% adoption rate and estimates saving over £130,000 (roughly $172,000) annually based on over 4,500 hours reclaimed from previous manual tasks.

But the numbers only tell part of the story. The real transformation happened in classrooms and offices across the trust. For Daniel Swift, a Year Six educator and Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert at Braunstone Community Primary School, his classroom became a laboratory for innovation. 

"Copilot for me is literally a game changer,” he says. “I'm not taking my laptop home on an evening unless I want to. It's like having another very experienced teacher just on your shoulder."

Swift’s pedagogical creativity shines through his innovative applications of Copilot. For instance, after students listened to an immersive World War II soundscape, students fed their emotional responses into a digital word cloud. Copilot transformed their raw vocabulary into differentiated sentences and paragraph starters. "The children could see their vocabulary used within sentences, within paragraphs," he explains. By starting with student voice and building upward, Swift ensures every learner can access the same rich vocabulary while working at their appropriate level. It's differentiation at scale—and it happens in real-time, keeping students engaged.

The impact on special education was particularly profound. When teaching about Iron Age roundhouses through Minecraft Education, students used the virtual building environment to construct historically accurate structures, Swift watched as students with additional needs excelled. "You would not be able to tell—if anything, our most able children struggled more than our less able children," he observed. Copilot helped create rubrics in child-friendly language, enabling metacognitive development as students self-assessed their work.

In terms of social emotional learning, Swift starts each day with Microsoft Reflect check-ins. This enables him to immediately identify students needing extra support, especially on Mondays when some students return to school after difficult weekends at home. When students return from an unsettled recess, Swift seamlessly redirects them back to Reflect, allowing him to address individual needs while maintaining the learning environment for all of his students. 

Assessment, once a weekend-stealing burden, suddenly became manageable. Swift discovered he could photograph 33 pieces of student work and have Copilot assess them against Year 6 standards in half an hour: a task that previously consumed six hours. As Swift enthusiastically puts it: "It saves more when we're assessing writing or marking. Marking's dead in the water now!”

Streamlining admin and lightening workloads across the trust

Administrative efficiency also skyrocketed across the trust. Stone condensed a 41-page safeguarding policy into a 750-word summary in three seconds. "It did an excellent job," she notes. "I could still give the casual workers our actual policy, but the 750-word summary was a quick, at-a-glance, easy-to-read document."

The technology's impact rippled through specialized roles. For Ben Mooney, a Deputy Head, last-minute assembly preparation went from an hour of stress to 15 minutes of creativity. Similarly, Ellen Croft, Director of Professional Development, saw her training material preparation time cut in half: from six hours to three hours weekly. "It really feels like it improves the quality of the training," she observed.

But the efficiency gains weren’t the whole story. Staff also experienced a meaningful reduction in emotional strain. Head educators shared that Copilot helped streamline responses to sensitive communications, allowing them to respond with clarity and professionalism in 30 minutes rather than agonizing over them for two hours. "I got my weekends back," one leader reflected. "I wouldn't spend the weekend worrying about my response to those letters." By supporting more efficient and emotionally neutral communication, Copilot has helped educators reclaim valuable time and focus on what matters most: their students.

Student outcomes improved measurably. Braunstone Community Primary School, which experienced a dip in 2023-24 results, saw some of the trust's best performance the following year. "The way they use Copilot themselves as educators has helped those results go back up, and they are some of the best in the trust because of how our Year Five and Six teachers utilize Copilot," Stone says. “They use it as their assistant to help them devise different types of lessons, teach with different approaches, and adapt lessons to fit the needs of certain groups that weren't achieving.”

Expanding access to AI tools and deepening support for staff

Looking ahead, Discovery Trust plans to build upon these initial successes, expanding from 59 to 377 licenses, bringing Copilot to Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs), office managers, and eventually all teaching staff. 

The importance of Discovery Trust’s strategic planning cannot be overstated. A well-designed deployment plan enabled them to approach the process in a coordinated and intentional way. Starting with leaders ensured they fully understood what was happening in classrooms, allowing them to provide meaningful support to their staff.

Fostering passion and reclaiming work-life balance

For institutions considering similar transformations, Discovery Trust’s experience reveals that success hinges on passionate champions who can inspire others and sustained comprehensive training that goes beyond the initial implementation.

"Having somebody who's passionate about it...they don't necessarily have to have the full understanding, but they have to be passionate about it because that does have that ripple effect," Stone explains. "And training, it's CPD (Continuing Professional Development), to get that right is really important. This isn't just a pocket of CPD. It's long-term CPD. It doesn't go away. It's continuous."

Swift offers encouragement to hesitant educators: "Just jump in. Just do it. “You're not going to mess it up. You're not going to make a mistake, and it will save you time and give you your weekends back. It’s about the right technology at the right moment for the right reason. If it's not directly impacting the children, don't do it." 

Discovery Trust's journey proves that strategic technology implementation in education transcends efficiency metrics. It's about restoring educators' passion, improving student outcomes, and creating sustainable work-life balance.  

"Copilot allows me to be a better version of me,” Swift says. “It buys you the headspace that we need, whether that's in the moment during a lesson or when you're getting it to create an explanation for a child that's struggling with something. It means I'm not working late on an evening. It means that I'm there in the classroom for my primary role. I'm present. Which is what it’s all about.”

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