The Challenge
Services For Education is a Birmingham-based charity that supports schools, teachers and young people through music, training, wellbeing and consultancy programmes. Like most organisations in 2026, they had colleagues across finance, communications and operations who were curious about AI but unsure how to use it well, alongside a small number who were already experimenting informally.
The ask was practical. They wanted a session that could take complete beginners from "I know it exists" to "I can use this in my job next week," while still offering value to colleagues further along the curve. And crucially, they wanted training that was vendor-neutral rather than tied to a single product, so that learning transferred across the tools their people already had open on their screens, namely Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
The Solution
TESS Group delivered a bespoke one-day AI short course for the Services For Education team, led by senior trainer Kirstie. The session was deliberately designed to work across mixed ability, pairing foundations with hands-on practice, and it centred on the TESS prompt framework, a structured approach to writing better prompts that transfers across every major AI tool.
The course covered the enterprise AI stack most UK teams encounter day to day:
Underneath the tools, the focus was on the principles that make any model useful: write precise prompts, ask the model to ask you questions back, and treat the output as a starting draft rather than a finished product. As one attendee put it afterwards:
The Results
What made this work wasn't just that people enjoyed the day. It was that the learning translated into real tasks the same week, across three very different parts of the organisation.
Finance: streamlining the purchase order process
I found the course useful and informative and have already used AI in helping us as a finance team look at ways we can streamline processes, namely the PO process. I found the prompt framework really useful in helping me refine the questions to ask, which in turn leads to better output responses.
Comms: wellbeing articles, faster and with a fresher voice
The one thing I did find really helpful, and which I've put into practise quite a few times since, was learning about the value in using good prompts to help craft short articles, re-jig the wording, structure and tone of emails and larger group comms messages. Certainly helped with pulling together a few quick wellbeing articles for ITK over the last couple of months when time has been tight and content a little lacking.
Wider team: AI as a critical eye on everyday work
Using AI prompts to act as a critical eye was useful, I applied this straight away to my next task to ensure I had all bases covered.
What the Team Said About Kirstie
The trainer made the day. Kirstie's delivery was the single most-cited strength in the team's feedback, with attendees highlighting how she catered to a wide range of starting points in the same room.
Really engaging presenter who catered for a range of needs in the group. Content was relevant to a wide audience, from someone completely new to AI prompts, to someone who was already using it. Plenty of practical tips and application ideas including the prompt framework, which was new learning for me.
Kirstie, the trainer, was really good and delivered it in a way that made it easier to understand. I knew the results you received were dependent on the prompts you used, but practising and advice from Kirstie make it far clearer.
The Themes That Stood Out
Confidence, not just content
Attendees left the day more confident and willing to use AI day to day, not just knowing what it was. "It has made me focus more on using AI in everyday tasks and more often than I did before."
A framework that travels
The prompt framework was the single most-mentioned takeaway. One attendee called it "new learning for me." Another applied it the same day to their next task.
Healthy scepticism built in
The course was clear that AI is a tool, not a solution. As one attendee said: "It is only to be used as a tool not a solution and to critically assess the output and not rely on it totally."
Mixed ability, one room
A real cross-functional audience, from total beginners to existing users, left with something useful. That breadth is unusual for AI training and hard to get right.
An Honest Note on Format
The team also told us, openly, what they would change. Several attendees, particularly those newer to AI, said the full day became intense by the afternoon once the topic moved on to agents. Their suggestion, which we are already acting on, is to offer a split format: a half-day intro covering foundations and prompting, a gap to practise on real work, and a follow-up half-day covering Gemini Gems, NotebookLM and agents in more depth.
We mention it here because it matters. We would rather publish feedback in full, take the product learning, and evolve the course, than only share the easy wins.
Why It Works
- Trainer first. Kirstie's ability to hold a mixed-ability room and translate theory into practice is a recurring theme across every piece of feedback.
- Framework over tools. The prompt framework is portable: it works equally well in Copilot on Monday and Gemini on Tuesday. Teams are not locked into a single vendor.
- Applied the same week. The finance team's PO process work, the ITK wellbeing articles, the critical-eye reviews, all happened within days of the course ending. That is the test of training that sticks.
- Vendor-neutral coverage. Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini including Gems, Perplexity and NotebookLM are all covered, so teams learn on the tools they actually use at work.
- Mixed ability by design. The course is built for rooms where some colleagues are brand new and others are already using AI. Both groups leave with something they did not have before.
- We listen. Services For Education's feedback is already shaping the split-format version of the course. Feedback goes into the product, not just the case study.
Explore Our AI Short Courses
Services For Education's team experience is typical of our AI short courses. If you want something similar for your team, whether a one-day immersion or a split-format rollout, the most relevant starting points are below.
Bring This to Your Team
If you want the Services For Education experience for your own organisation, get in touch. We deliver bespoke AI short courses on-site across the UK, in half-day, one-day and split-format options, tailored to the tools and workflows your team already uses.
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