AI literacy at IAS
Students here will enter a working world where fluency with these tools is assumed. The job of a school is to teach them to use one well, to judge what it produces, and to know when to put it down and think for themselves.
The IB position
Not banned, and not a free pass.
The International Baccalaureate Organization has been explicit: AI tools will not be banned. Schools are expected instead to teach students to use them ethically and transparently, within the same academic integrity rules that cover everything else.
It is not your work unless you say so
The IB updated its Academic Integrity Policy with specific guidance on artificial intelligence. AI generated content is not treated as a student’s own work unless it is properly cited and referenced, and students must be transparent about how and where they used it in any assessed piece.
Two principles, and the line between them
If a student uses AI to help them learn, that is acceptable. If a student uses AI to produce work they then present as their own, that is not. Everything else follows from those two sentences.
A tool, in a long line of tools
The IB has compared these tools to calculators, spell checkers and translation software: technologies that changed how work gets done without removing the need to understand it.
By age
What this looks like at each stage.
A seven year old and a seventeen year old need opposite things from this technology, so the approach changes three times as a child moves up the school.
- Kindergarten to Grade 5
- AI tools are not used in the classroom. The focus is on what no technology replaces: reading, writing by hand, forming an argument in your own words, and working a problem through step by step.
- Grades 6 to 8
- Students begin working with AI under teacher supervision. Lessons are built around evaluating what the tool produced, for accuracy, for bias and for depth. Not around accepting it.
- Grades 9 to 12
- Students use AI as part of their academic and creative process, with clear expectations on originality and citation. In the IB Diploma Programme this maps directly onto the IB’s own policy, and students learn to declare their use of it openly. The mark schemes reward original thinking, not generated text.
Why it is set up this way
A finished product is not a developed mind.
A student who uses AI to write an essay has an essay. A student who writes it themselves has something the essay was only ever evidence of. That is the reason for the sequence above. Not anxiety about the technology.
Defending an idea
Students pitch original ideas to a panel and defend their thinking under questioning. That part cannot be outsourced.
Integrity, in writing
From Grade 6, students and parents sign an Academic Integrity Pledge. Misuse of AI is handled as academic misconduct, in the same way as any other form of it.
Teachers who keep up
Staff take ongoing professional development on responsible AI use, guided by the IB framework and by the school’s own developing practice.
The test for families
The IB’s two part test works at home as well. Is your child using AI to help them learn, or to avoid doing the work? That is the line.
Questions
Wondering how this works in your child’s classroom?
Your child’s teacher is the right person to ask, because the answer differs by subject and by year group. The office will put you in touch.
