OECD Digital Education Outlook 2026: Exploring Effective Uses of Generative AI in Education

The OECD Digital Education Outlook is the OECD’s flagship publication presenting our latest analysis of emerging digital technologies in education.

This 2026 edition synthesises evidence and expert insights to show how generative AI has the potential to transform the quality and effectiveness of learning, as well as the productivity of education systems, provided its associated risks are carefully managed. Its applications include enhancing student learning, supporting teachers’ performance while preserving professional autonomy, and strengthening education systems, as well as institutional and research capacities.

For students, generative AI can scale personalised learning through intelligent tutoring systems, including in low-infrastructure settings. Generative AI can also support knowledge acquisition by enabling collaborative learning and enhancing creativity.

However, evidence shows that overreliance on generative AI tools that provide direct answers can reduce students’ active engagement, improving task performance without corresponding learning gains. When used as a shortcut rather than a learning tool, generative AI can displace cognitive effort and weaken the skills that underpin deep learning.

For example, a field experiment in Türkiye found that while access to GPT-4 improved short-term performance – by 48% with the standard interface, and by 127% with a tutoring version designed to support learning – students performed 17% worse once access was removed, showing that generative AI can undermine learning unless explicitly designed to support skill acquisition.

For teachers, generative AI can improve both productivity and teaching quality. Evidence cited in the report shows a 31% reduction in time spent on lesson and resource planning by secondary science teachers in England, and a 9 percentage-point increase in student pass rates when low-experience tutors used AI support, with smaller gains for more experienced tutors.

According to the OECD’s 2024 Teaching and Learning International Survey, 37% of teachers already use generative AI for work-related tasks - such as learning about or summarising topics and supporting lesson planning - with substantial variation across countries.

At the same time, concerns persist that overreliance on AI could undermine teacher autonomy and professionalism, raise ethical risks, and, when used extensively for tasks such as marking, feedback or lesson planning, erode teachers’ professional skills.

The report calls for a shift towards educational generative AI systems designed with teachers, enabling them to monitor students’ interactions with generative AI and actively shape its use in learning.

At the system level, generative AI can improve the efficiency of education systems and school management by automating and supporting administrative and analytical processes. It can help develop standardised assessment items, review curricular alignment by analysing actual versus expected student workload, enhance study and career guidance, and support the classification of educational resources to name just a few. Generative AI can also have potentially transformative implications for education research, as in other fields.

To realise this potential, policymakers will need to mitigate and manage associated risks - such as those related to access, data privacy, ethics and bias – through sound policy frameworks and effective governance.

The OECD supports policymakers in making effective and responsible use of generative AI in education. This includes promoting approaches that place human judgement, feedback and oversight at the centre of AI use; strengthening teachers’ capacity to engage with AI confidently and effectively; and providing clear, practical guidance on the appropriate use of generative AI in education. The OECD can also foster international co-operation and the exchange of good practices, enabling peer learning across jurisdictions, so that generative AI delivers on its full potential for better learning and more effective education systems.