Closing the AI guidance gap in education

AI is prompting a fundamental reassessment of what education should prepare societies for. As intelligence becomes easier to access and apply, the question is no longer simply what people need to know, but which skills and capabilities will help them thrive in an AI-enabled world. Recent debates around PISA and AI, including those led by the ⁠(opens in a new window)OECD’s Andreas Schleicher⁠(opens in a new window), underscore this shift. They also point to a central lesson: as AI becomes more capable, the role of teachers becomes more important, not less. Their expertise, judgement and ability to guide learning remain essential. Equipping teachers, schools and governments with AI skills and confidence to make informed decisions about these tools must therefore be a priority for education systems.

Across EMEA, we are working with governments and education systems, including in Estonia, Slovakia, Greece and Italy, amongst others to explore how AI can support educators. These collaborations share three priorities: equitable access to frontier AI tools, jointly designed AI literacy programmes, and ongoing measurement and evaluation, whilst adapting to local languages, curricula and institutions.

This report shares emerging lessons from our education partnerships in EMEA, focusing on educator support, AI literacy, local capability and evaluation. It examines what partners have tried, what they have reported and what remains uncertain. Country examples reflect their particular contexts and arrangements, and their findings should be interpreted within those limits. Five themes organise these lessons: clear educational goals, educator preparation, local partnerships, critical AI literacy and credible evidence.

Three early patterns are emerging from this work:

Our aim is to share practical lessons from these partnerships that education leaders can consider in their own contexts. These are early experiences, rather than a single model for education systems to follow.

Leah Belsky