Schools are "crying out" for guidance on how pupils and teachers should use artificial intelligence, according to a report published in England on Tuesday by Sir Anthony Seldon, the former head teacher who co-founded the group AI in Education in 2023. AI is being used in classrooms more and more, he says, but its arrival has been "chaotic and anarchic": every school, every teacher and every 14-year-old working out the rules alone.
What the report asks for
The report, written with the venture capitalist Tim Bunting, calls for a national framework for adopting AI in education in England, with training for teachers, which every school would use to write its own "AI strategy" by September next year. It argues that getting a grip on AI needs the same national urgency as a war or an epidemic, and proposes a task force modelled on the one that delivered the Covid vaccine. Among its ten points:
- Every school and college writes an AI strategy, and the schools inspectorate Ofsted checks how it is being carried out.
- A mass public information campaign on what AI can and cannot do, and its risks.
- Using AI to change how schools collect data and track each pupil's progress.
- A "two-lane" assessment system: traditional exams alongside a continuous, AI-assisted evaluation of what a student actually understands.
What the students said
The report's own poll of young people found many who felt AI was making education matter less in their lives; some said it could eventually replace teachers and make universities "useless". "Put simply, education has not kept pace with how, and how much, young people are already using AI," the report says, "and that gap is starting to show up as a loss of perceived value in the institution itself."
Not all of them are cynical. At King's Leadership Academy in Liverpool, which has already built AI into its curriculum, principal Benjamin Barker wants pupils to learn to use the tools safely while still developing critical thinking. Emma, 12, uses AI for her robotics projects and to proofread her English homework. "There's no way we're going to completely pull back from it," she told the BBC. "So I think that we should use it to be better people."
England's Department for Education says it takes the "significant opportunities and challenges" of AI "incredibly seriously", points to its refreshed curriculum, which it says will teach digital skills and how to spot disinformation, and says it is building AI tutoring tools and new vocational routes.
The same students, without the report
Read from Dhaka, the striking thing about Sir Anthony's report is not its recommendations but that it exists. Bangladeshi students use ChatGPT, Gemini and the AI built into their phones for homework, assignments and exam preparation exactly as English ones do; coaching centres advertise "AI-assisted" answer writing; and no board, ministry or textbook has said a word about what is allowed, what is cheating and what a teacher should do about either. The 2023 curriculum that briefly replaced exams with school-based assessment was withdrawn in 2024 before anyone asked how AI would fit; the restored 2012 curriculum predates smartphones.
The report's cheapest recommendations are the ones that would travel: a one-page national position on AI in schools, a short teacher-training module, and a rule that every school writes down its own policy, even if it is a single paragraph. None needs a task force. What they need is someone to decide that the conversation has started.
