AI in schools: the pros and cons a parent can actually act on

Short answer: your school's AI policy matters less than your child's AI habits, so build the habits first. Then ask the school anyway, because the gap between what happens at school and what happens at your kitchen table is where children get confused about the rules.

I am on both sides of this one. I teach, and my own children are at school. So here is the honest version from both chairs: what AI in schools does well, what it gets wrong, and the few sentences that turn a parent into a partner instead of a complaint.

The pro with actual evidence behind it

Most of the excitement about AI in education is marketing. One part is not.

The flagship study is a Harvard randomised controlled trial in an undergraduate physics course. Students using a carefully designed AI tutor learnt about twice as much, in less time, than peers in a well-taught active classroom, and they enjoyed it more. That points at the oldest finding in education: one-to-one tutoring works, and it has always been too expensive to give to every child.

The words doing the work there are "carefully designed". That tutor was built to ask questions, give hints and refuse to hand over answers. It was not a chatbot with a textbook bolted on.

So the pro, honestly: AI can give an ordinary child what used to be available only to families who could afford a private tutor, which is patient, unembarrassing help at the moment they are stuck. Where class sizes of forty are normal, that is not a small thing.

The cons, and which ones to actually worry about

Passive use. The big one, and not hypothetical. Prompt, copy, submit bypasses the writing, the research and the thinking in one move. The failure mode is not a child who cannot write an essay. It is a child who gets good marks all year and then sits in an exam hall with no laptop.

The nuance, from Chapter 17: the problem is almost never AI use, it is unguided AI use. A school that bans everything has not prevented passive use, it has moved it to the bedroom where nobody is teaching the alternative.

Privacy. Whatever a child types into a general-purpose tool goes to a company, and schools sometimes adopt platforms faster than they read the terms. The Family Online Safety Institute's 2025 survey found parents consistently overestimate how well their children understand what AI platforms do with their data. Worth asking which tools the school has approved, and whether they have a specific children's privacy policy.

Uneven access. The one South African parents feel most sharply and nobody says out loud at the school meeting. One school has devices, wifi and a teacher who has been on a course. The school twenty minutes away has none of those. If AI tutoring helps struggling children most, handing it only to the already-advantaged widens the very gap it could have closed.

Teachers without training. Not a criticism, a constraint. Carnegie Learning's research found around half of teachers cite a lack of AI training as a top concern, and that even among those trained, only about a quarter were shown what AI actually is and how it works.

Where South Africa actually sits

A cautious paragraph, because the picture is unsettled. The Department of Basic Education gazetted a Coding and Robotics curriculum for Grades R to 9 in June 2024, but the 2025/26 annual plan indicates it will not become compulsory soon: the Foundation Phase version, unplugged and needing no devices, is to roll out gradually from 2026 as resources allow, and the department's stated priority remains early-grade literacy and numeracy. Which is defensible. A child who cannot read for meaning by Grade 4 will not be rescued by a chatbot.

The consequence for you is simple. There is no national rule on AI in schoolwork. Almost every rule your child lives under is set school by school, sometimes teacher by teacher, which is why asking is worth ten minutes.

The questions to ask your school

From Chapter 15. Not all at once, and not as demands. Spread them across a term.

• Does the school have an AI use policy, and is it published anywhere I can read it?
• How does the school approach academic integrity in relation to AI tools?
• How is AI use addressed in the subjects my child is actually taking? Where is it encouraged, and where is it not allowed?
• What guidance is my child getting about using AI as a learning tool rather than a shortcut?
• Have teachers had any training or professional development on AI?
• What would be most useful for me to reinforce at home so we are saying the same thing?

That last question changes the temperature of the whole conversation. It says: I am not here to audit you, I am here to help.

The email that opens the conversation

Adapted from the Chapter 15 template. Keep it short: teachers have 180 other children.

Dear [Teacher],

I wanted to open a conversation about AI rather than arrive with concerns or demands. I would love to understand where your class currently stands: what is permitted, what is not, and how I can best reinforce your approach at home. I am also happy to share anything useful I have come across, and I would gladly talk to the class about how these tools are used in [my industry] if that is ever helpful. Would a brief chat at your convenience be possible?

Best wishes, [Your name]

Most teachers who get a message like that respond with relief rather than defensiveness. I certainly do. The parents I dread are not the ones who ask questions, but the ones who arrive certain.

How to support a teacher who is working it out

Assume good faith and limited time. Your child's teacher is probably managing three groups of parents who want opposite things, no clear guidance from above, and a policy they were given six weeks to write.

Offer something specific. An article that was useful. Twenty minutes talking to a class about how AI is used in your work. A willingness to sit on a working group.

Acknowledge the constraints out loud. "I know you have had almost no guidance on this" changes a conversation more than any argument.

Keep the messages consistent at home. The point of the Family AI Agreement in Chapter 10 is that a child stops having to choose whose rules to honour. If the school says AI may be used for brainstorming but not for drafting, write that into your agreement in those words. The free builder takes five minutes.

Do the habits regardless of the policy. The 20-Minute Rule, struggle first and ask second. V.E.T.: verify, explain, transform. And the explain-it-back test, which is the same test the teacher applies. Those work under a total ban and under a permissive policy alike, which is why they are the part you control. The practical version is in AI homework help that does not do the homework.

Questions parents ask

Should schools allow AI or ban it?

Neither extreme survives contact with reality. A blanket ban does not stop use, it just moves it somewhere nobody is teaching judgement, and it leaves school-leavers unprepared for tools they will meet at university and at work. Unrestricted use produces prompt, copy, submit. What works is specific: allowed for brainstorming, checking and revision, not allowed for producing submitted text, with the reasons explained.

Does AI actually improve learning outcomes?

In the strongest study available, yes. A Harvard randomised controlled trial found students using a carefully designed AI tutor learnt about twice as much, in less time, than peers in an actively taught class. But that tutor was built to ask questions and withhold answers. Evidence for casual chatbot use as a substitute for schoolwork points the other way, towards weaker engagement and weaker retention.

What should I do if my school has no AI policy?

Do not treat it as negligence. Most schools are still working it out with no guidance and no training budget. Ask your child's teacher what happens in their class in practice, which is often different from any written policy. Then offer to help: a parent working group, a shared resource, twenty minutes speaking to a class. Schools consistently say they want partnership rather than pressure.

How do I talk to a teacher about AI without sounding like I am attacking them?

Lead with a question rather than a position, and ask what would help them. "How can I reinforce your approach at home?" reframes the whole exchange in one sentence. Acknowledge that they have had little guidance, because they almost certainly have. Offer something concrete you can give. Save disagreement for after you understand what they are actually dealing with.

Sources

• Chapter 15 of Raising AI-Ready Children on working with schools, the questions to ask and the template email.
• Chapter 17, Concerns One to Three, on cheating, cognitive development, privacy and guided versus unguided use.
• Chapter 10 on the 20-Minute Rule, the V.E.T. checklist and the Family AI Agreement.
• Kestin, G., et al., 2025, Harvard randomised controlled trial on AI tutoring; MIT Media Lab, 2025, essay-writing study.
• Carnegie Learning, The State of AI in Education 2025; Family Online Safety Institute, 2025 online safety survey.
• South African Department of Basic Education, Coding and Robotics curriculum for Grades R to 9 and the 2025/26 annual performance plan, checked on the date at the top of this post.