{"id":414205,"date":"2026-04-23T22:41:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T22:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/414205\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T22:41:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T22:41:15","slug":"educators-should-adopt-trust-based-approach-to-ai-in-schools-committee-hears-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/414205\/","title":{"rendered":"Educators should adopt trust-based approach to AI in schools, committee hears \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Educators should adopt a trust-based system when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI) in schools, whereby students understand it is their responsibility to master certain topics without cheating, an Oireachtas<\/a> committee has heard.<\/p>\n

The use of AI in Irish schools<\/a> was a point of contention at this year\u2019s teacher conferences, where concerns were raised about its impact on continuous assessment and the difficulty of keeping Government policy in line with the pace of change in the sector.<\/p>\n

The co-ordinators of an AI in schools programme in Estonia<\/a> appeared before the Oireachtas Committee on Artificial Intelligence on Thursday to tell of their experience implementing a proactive approach to the technology.<\/p>\n

Laura Kalda of AI Leap, the programme established in Estonia to formalise AI use by second-level<\/a> teachers and students, said a nationwide survey of more than 15,500 people in 2024 showed AI was already being widely used by students, but not so much by teachers.<\/p>\n

Up to 90 per cent of Estonian students reported using freely available AI tools for schoolwork, while only 53 per cent of teachers were doing so. This mismatch between student behaviour and school practice made it clear that Estonia needed a strategic, co-ordinated response, she said.<\/p>\n

A pilot programme involving 20,000 students and 4,900 teachers in 154 schools was implemented at a cost of \u20ac4 million. It involved regular training sessions for teachers, where \u201clearning communities\u201d were set up in schools to allow teachers to reflect and collaborate on the use of AI tools in their subject areas. <\/p>\n

The programme also worked with OpenAI<\/a>, the company behind the ChatGPT<\/a> tool, to develop an application specifically for Estonian students. This app is intentionally configured not to provide direct answers. It instead acts like a teacher by asking guiding questions and helping students to form their own conclusions, the committee heard. <\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in TD Darren O\u2019Rourke<\/a> asked if AI Leap had developed a verification process to ensure students\u2019 work was their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cI presume they are using it to inform their own research and studies, rather than presenting it as their own work, which is a concern in Ireland,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018There will be lay-offs\u2019: the students studying AI in DublinOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Kalda said Estonia was \u201cworking towards a trust-based system\u201d and trying to be as \u201copen about it\u201d as possible. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe assume that it\u2019s there and that everyone is using it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe solution we\u2019re trying to achieve is that they [the students] will need to learn the topics that they need to learn, and they will need to present this at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kalda added: \u201cIf you need to master a topic by some point, and basically, if you haven\u2019t learned it, then you haven\u2019t mastered it, then this is your own responsibility to achieve it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Using AI to get around this \u201cis a form of cheating\u201d, she said, which \u201chas been there for whole education system\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is for the teachers to decide how they approach this.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Educators should adopt a trust-based system when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in schools,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,2670,181703,8859,61,60,12636,1682,28205,80],"class_list":["post-414205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-chatgpt","tag-darren-orourke","tag-estonia","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-oireachtas","tag-openai","tag-second-level","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}