Reshaping education with Azure Open AI: How SEDUC is transforming learning and administration in São Paulo

São Paulo hosts Brazil’s largest education system, with over 3.7 million students across more than five thousand schools. Basic education is mandatory, free, and inclusive, with specialized support for students requiring learning assistance.

SEDUC—which translates to "State Secretariat for Education and Quality of Education"—is the governmental body responsible for the formulation, supervision, coordination, execution, and evaluation of educational policy in São Paulo. As Brazil’s largest education network, it manages the implementation of programs across the state.

Overcoming hesitation and resistance to AI

SEDUC advises state schools across Brazil in developing, implementing, and evaluating educational programs and pedagogical innovations. As part of its mission to enhance teaching and learning, the organization sought to integrate AI and digital tools into its operations, catering to the diverse needs of students, including those with special educational needs. Some educators and students were initially hesitant, fearing AI could replace educators or pose ethical dilemmas. SEDUC addressed these concerns through training and guidance, as well as deepening its partnership with Microsoft.

Microsoft has been an important, long-standing partner for SEDUC as they value the integration capabilities of Microsoft solutions, and the company’s commitment to customer success. After researching all of its options for AI solutions, SEDUC chose Azure OpenAI Service as the best solution for its educators and students’ diverse needs.

SEDUC is rolling out Microsoft 365 A5 licenses to all employees, educators, and 3.5 million students to enhance security governance and provide improved support. The phased adoption of Microsoft Copilot has also begun, with 1,000 licenses currently in use to upskill and integrate new technologies among faculty, staff, and students.

Initial implementation prioritized administrative tasks—such as generating legal documents and handling administrative inquiries—and has expanded to include AI usage with students and teachers, including personalized learning to cater to individual student needs and help them recover from learning losses during the pandemic.

Its partnership with Microsoft emphasizes SEDUC’s commitment to data security and privacy by spearheading robust measures to protect sensitive information. Moving forward, the education network is carefully considering the ethical implications of AI, ensuring it is used responsibly and equitably, while championing transparency to gain trust in the process.

“The idea was to have a very strong partner on this journey because nobody knows the implications of what we are working towards, and we need to protect and support children in the best way possible,” says Luzia Sarno, IT Director at SEDUC. “We had a lot of data and now we want to explore this data for, for instance, ‘Why is one school performing better than another?' ‘Why is this teacher performing better than another?’ So, everything that we are doing, we try to have measures and then apply that intelligence. We need somebody that understands our needs and that’s Microsoft.”

AI-powered personalization to enhance student feedback

After addressing initial hesitation, SEDUC moved forward with its AI-powered implementation journey, starting with the use of Azure OpenAI Service to help provide personalized feedback on student essays. The sheer volume of essays made manual grading impractical. Azure OpenAI Service analyzes millions of essays, offering personalized, tailored feedback to educators so they can help students improve their writing skills and understanding of the subject matter. This technology saves educators thousands of hours, freeing them to focus on instruction.

“A typical teacher in São Paulo may have about six different classes,” says Daniel Barros, Pedagogical Director at SEDUC. “And if you have about 40 students in each of these classes, we are talking about 240 students. Our expectation is that students write an essay every month for eight consecutive months. That process resulted in nearly 10 million essays since the beginning of the school year in February! So how can you expect them to correct all of these essays in a few weeks or in a month? They simply can’t without help. Now, with AI, educators receive meaningful feedback and can easily customize it to that very student. And this feedback is multidimensional.”

Streamlining administrative tasks for efficiency

Building on the success of personalized student feedback, SEDUC is exploring new ways to harness AI across its entire education system, including streamlining content creation for educators and curriculum developers, leading to greater efficiency. Azure OpenAI Service has helped with curating academic materials, generating questions, developing quizzes, building activities, and assessing student knowledge. These automated processes streamline content development, improve material quality, and free up educators for one-on-one student interactions and instruction.

“We’ve also been trying hard to improve the content that we produce for every single class,” explains Barros. “Now we have digital materials available that support each teacher. We have 150,000 teachers in our schools and a large team that produces and updates this content, so we’ve been using AI to great effect to improve that.”

Through collaboration with Microsoft, SEDUC has also been using AI tools to streamline development processes and enhance the efficiency of administration systems. These AI-driven solutions have automated tasks such as payroll processing, student registration, and even legal document analysis. As a result, payroll issues have dropped from 35,000 to 400 cases, with response times shrinking from months to a matter of days.This automation allows administrators to shift their focus to more strategic initiatives, driving greater impact across the organization.

“What I'm trying to do is get SEDUC to be more efficient,” says Vinicius Neiva, Secretary of Education, State of São Paulo. “In Brazil, we have a regulation mandating that at least 25% of the total revenue of the state must be invested in education. So, as we become leaner and more efficient, all of this money that we save can directly support students. We have a lot of very decentralized services that were not very efficient. We are working to concentrate that control and make services more efficient, using AI-powered services. And the results have so far proved dramatic.”

Prioritizing security, privacy, and ethical AI use

While streamlining administrative tasks has increased efficiency, SEDUC remains focused on ensuring that these advancements are supported by robust security measures and ethical AI use. Although achieving previously insurmountable learning milestones is important, SEDUC also realizes the importance of responsible AI development. This includes addressing concerns about data privacy, security, compliance, and potential biases in AI algorithms. SEDUC, with Microsoft support, is committed to prioritizing ethical considerations and mitigating security risks throughout its AI implementation.

“Security is a huge concern for us, especially with required Brazilian security laws,” Neiva explains. “So, we have a strategic plan for responding to data issues and classifying that data to keep it safe. There is a lot of work for us to do. But security is a very huge issue for us, so we are working hard to improve that.”

Empowering all: Training and upskilling for AI integration

Neiva also emphasizes the need for ongoing training, upskilling, and support of faculty, staff, and students to ensure successful adoption of new technologies. For an extensive organization like SEDUC, having a clear strategy for training and rollout plans beyond initial licenses is critical to guiding future actions and decisions.

“We are working to change the misconception amongst many educators—and even some students—that whenever students use AI, they are somehow cheating, rather than viewing it as a tool that can enhance learning, adds Barros. “So, we're thinking about how we can encourage the use of AI-powered activities and tools as part of their learning journey. But educators need to have a good idea of how to do this. They need training. They need orientation. They need suggestions. So, this will be a focus for SEDUC in the near future.”

Moving forward: Expanding AI’s role in education

With ongoing training in place for their AI-powered solution for personalized feedback on student essays, SEDUC is now looking ahead to further expand AI’s role in education. Integrating AI into existing systems and workflows has been key to SEDUC’s success. To address specific needs of its diverse student population, SEDUC developed internal tools, including a grammar checker and one for generating open-ended questions to enrich student learning. Currently in the testing phase, the AI system has already processed hundreds of thousands of open-ended questions, and the feedback has been invaluable for students.

“With just one grade, we had hundreds of thousands of these open questions corrected,” Barros notes. “The feedback is then given back to the students. It’s incredible. We wouldn't be able to do this without AI.”

Looking ahead, SEDUC plans to further integrate AI into curriculum development, virtual tutoring, personalized learning paths, and other student support systems, while continuing to empower educators and students to develop greater AI literacy.

SEDUC is also exploring new opportunities by expanding its use of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, focusing on new technologies like chatbots and Power Pages, signifying a significant upgrade in the network’s technological infrastructure. It is also working to leverage AI to gain insights from data and make more informed decisions.

SEDUC’s mission is to provide a robust educational framework that supports the success of every student. This includes actively fostering collaboration with other educational institutions and technology providers to share best practices, advance AI in education throughout Brazil, and stay current with AI innovations to adapt inclusive learning strategies for long-term success.

By leveraging Microsoft AI-powered solutions and committing to responsible AI practices, SEDUC has improved student outcomes, enhanced efficiency, and addressed key educational challenges. As AI continues to evolve, SEDUC’s proactive approach to integrating these technologies positions it as a leader not just in Brazil but globally. By balancing innovation with responsibility, SEDUC is setting a global standard for education systems.

“Microsoft AI solutions support our pedagogical side, our administrative side, and our technical foundation,” says Sarno. “We want to meaningfully contribute to society. And all of our Microsoft AI tools provide more and better solutions for teachers, faculty, and—of course—our students to help prepare them for a bright future. These tools can help them to be better students, better people, and better employees and entrepreneurs.”