This is a an idea I’ve been thinking about in using local LLMs in schools as part of an approach to using AI in education.

Schools and trusts invest huge amounts of time, energy, and money in training and developing staff. But often, much of that professional learning fades over time — buried in slide decks, stored on shared drives, or simply forgotten as new priorities emerge.

What if that didn’t happen? What if every training session, every CPD event, every shared piece of wisdom could live on — embedded into the very decision-making of the organisation?

Imagine a local, private large language model (LLM) securely hosted within the school or trust, trained not on the internet, but on your own training materials, CPD content, policies, and agreed approaches. Over time, it would become a kind of organisational memory — reflecting the school’s values, methods, and philosophy.

Staff could then ask the LLM questions such as:

> “How should I respond to this situation based on our behaviour policy?” 
> “What does our SEMH training say about supporting a dysregulated pupil?” 
> “Which part of our safeguarding procedure applies here?”

The LLM’s responses would be shaped by the same thinking, priorities, and values leaders have chosen to instil — effectively scaling the organisation’s shared expertise. 

It’s a bit like the headteacher/senior leader being able to coach everyone, all the time — a digital mentor grounded in the school’s own ethos.

Why This Could Matter

This approach could make professional learning live rather than static. It could save schools money by extracting far more value from every training session ever delivered — because the principles and insights shared wouldn’t fade after one inset day. Instead, they would feed into every conversation, decision, and reflection the LLM supports in the future.

Over time, the system would allow leaders to reuse existing CPD content, maintain consistency even when staff change, keep policies alive in daily practice, and make decisions that continuously reflect collective learning. In other words, schools could maximise the return on every bit of professional development by ensuring it actively informs future thinking.

The Leadership Foundations

Of course, for this to work, leadership clarity and intentional design are essential. The LLM will only ever be as good as the material it’s trained on. That means:

1. Clarity of purpose and outcomes — Leaders need to be explicit about what they want training to achieve, strategically and operationally.

2. Alignment between strategy and operations — The system should mirror how strategic goals connect to day-to-day practice.

3. Curating relevant, values-led content — The LLM should only learn from the right kind of training, ensuring responses remain aligned with ethos.

Prompt Engineering and Staff Empowerment

Even with the best training data, the model’s usefulness depends on how people interact with it. Staff will need guidance on how to ask effective questions — known as prompt engineering.

• Standardised prompts: Pre-written prompts ensure consistency and save time.

• Staff training: Teaching staff how to write effective prompts empowers independence and deeper engagement.

Either way, the goal is for staff to see the LLM as a thinking partner, not a replacement for professional judgment.

Expanding the Model: Policy and Legislation

Once established, the LLM could also be trained on statutory guidance and legislation — allowing staff to reference key frameworks quickly and accurately.

By combining internal training with external legal frameworks, the system becomes both a coach and a compliance companion — keeping staff informed and confident.

A Virtual Headteacher/Senior Leader — For Everyone

At its best, this concept could make leadership support available to everyone, all the time. Staff would have access to guidance that reflects the school’s ethos and priorities, while leaders gain confidence that decisions across the organisation remain consistent with their strategic intent.

It doesn’t replace leadership — it amplifies it. It doesn’t replace CPD — it extends its lifespan. It doesn’t replace reflection — it deepens it.

An Invitation for Reflection

This is very much a thought experiment — an idea still in its exploratory phase. I’d love to hear from others, especially around potential blind spots or challenges I might not have considered.

What governance or ethical issues might arise? How could we ensure accuracy and accountability? What might we miss when trying to capture “human” learning inside a model?

In Summary

Local LLMs trained on a school’s own CPD, policies, and values could strengthen consistency, keep training alive, reduce waste, and act as a coaching tool for everyone, anytime.