Microsoft’s latest round of Copilot updates has landed and it’s removing the need for the small, repetitive admin tasks that eat into teacher planning time.
The update is a hefty one – 23 new features that you can read about in the full roundup on the Microsoft Community Hub if you want the complete list.
But, as we’ve been working with schools for over 10 years to help educators achieve more with Microsoft 365, Teams and SharePoint, we know which updates matter most to teachers.
We’ve pulled out the top ten that solve common issues around planning, marking, grouping students, setting AI expectations.
Keep reading to discover more.
Faster lesson planning with Teach
There are two new updates to Copilot that reduce duplication of work and the time spent on admin.
Unit Plans preview in Teach
Rather than building a scheme of work lesson by lesson, educators will be able to describe a unit – subject, grade, duration, and any existing content or standards to ground it in – and Teach drafts a full unit plan, complete with an overview, essential questions and week-by-week structure.
From there, it’s editable, not a finished product: you refine it, attach existing lesson plans, and keep going with Copilot Chat to generate supporting materials.
Remember Settings
Teach will start remembering previously used subjects and grade levels across Teach, Teams, Microsoft 365 LTI and OneNote, so you’re not re-entering the same context every time you open a new tool. It sounds minor until you’re the third teacher that week retyping “Year 9, Geography, KS3” into yet another dialogue box.
Clearer expectations with AI Guidelines in Assignments
This new feature promises better communication about AI usage in homework.
Set AI Guidelines for students in Teams Assignments
Educators can now attach one of four AI expectation levels – from full use to no AI at all – directly to an assignment, so students see exactly what’s allowed before they start, alongside a Copilot launch button where appropriate.
We’ve covered the new Set AI Guidelines feature in full detail in a dedicated guide, including how to set it up step by step and how to keep it consistent across a school or trust.
Personalised support
Coming later this year, this new feature is great for schools thinking hard about differentiation and personalised support.
Assign Study & Learn agent
Study & Learn is Microsoft’s AI study coach inside Copilot Chat, built for students aged 13 and over. It’s designed to work through problems step by step and quiz students on material rather than simply handing over answers. Later this year, educators will be able to assign Study & Learn directly from an assignment.
Wider reach for standards and curriculum
With the new update, there are now even more options when it comes to standards and curriculum frameworks.
Standards and curriculum support for 50+ countries
Microsoft’s standards library – used to align lesson plans, rubrics and quizzes to a recognised curriculum framework – now covers academic standards from more than 50 countries, including England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
This is great news for independent and international schools running mixed curricula, and for MATs wanting AI-generated content that’s anchored to what Ofsted and exam boards expect, rather than a generic international framework.
Standards integration into Teams Assignments
Plus, the same standards library is now built into the Assignments workflow itself, not just the Teach module. This means that rubrics and instructions generated for an assignment can be tied to a specific curriculum standard from the outset, rather than adjusted after the fact.
Practice made easier
Automatically create learning resources and revision materials for your students.
Learning Activities integration in Teams Assignments and Classwork
Flashcards, fill-in-the-blank exercises and matching activities can now be generated automatically from documents already attached to an assignment or Classwork post, so turning a set of lesson notes into a revision activity takes a couple of clicks rather than a rebuild from scratch.
Collaboration is seamless
Working together in Microsoft 365 just got even easier.
Collaboration Groups in Teams Assignments
With the new update, group assignments get a proper structure. Teachers can create Collaboration Groups directly within an assignment, so group work, shared submissions and individual grading all sit inside the same familiar Assignments flow, rather than being managed separately through Teams channels.
Reuse existing groups in Assignments
And what’s more, once a group has been set up, whether for a project, a seating plan, or a previous assignment, it can be reused rather than rebuilt from scratch each time. It’s a small change, but it saves a lot of time and duplicated effort in the long run.
Learning Collaboration Groups in Teams Assignments (coming soon)
This upcoming feature is expected to bring more structure to how group work is guided and assessed within Assignments, worth keeping your eye out for if group projects are a regular part of your curriculum.
Get ready for AI
It’s clear from their latest announcements about Copilot, Microsoft is trying to make the AI tool feel like part of the everyday teaching workflow rather than a separate feature bolted on.
A few practical next steps:
- Revisit your AI policy wording, as each new Copilot feature touches assignments, Guidelines, Unit Plans and Study & Learn all interact with the same expectations you’ve already set.
- Make sure your Microsoft 365 environment is ready. Copilot features are only as safe and useful as the permissions and standards library sitting underneath them – our AI Readiness support is built around getting exactly that right before staff start relying on these tools day to day.
If your school or trust is thinking through what a joined-up approach to AI should look like, across Teams, SharePoint and Microsoft 365, get in touch with our team to talk through where to start.
