In September, Henry Price observed a classroom of 7- to 8-year-olds learn about the Stone Age. They discussed and wrote about cave paintings, then put on virtual reality headsets to explore them.
The founding principal of Rugby School Dubai hopes his students will soon study ancient Egypt the same way — reading about it, creating artwork, and then stepping inside a virtual pyramid, or using artificial intelligence to “interview” a pharaoh.
“AI does not replace reading, writing, discussion, or creativity. It enhances them and opens new doors,” Price told Rest of World. “We want our students to be excited by AI, but never [be] passive users. We want children who use AI to ask better questions, not children who rely on it to give them all the answers.”
The United Arab Emirates recently became the first country to make AI a required K-12 subject.
Our goal remains to ensure that any integration of technology is developmentally appropriate and supports meaningful learning.”Saeed Kharbash, CEO of policies, research and programmes at Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority
That puts the country on one side of a growing global debate over what children should learn about AI and when they should encounter it. While the UAE and China are treating early AI literacy as a national priority, some Western governments are moving in the opposite direction. New York City introduced a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI in public schools from preschool through grade eight, citing concerns about children’s mental health. Norway has also enacted a similar near-ban for primary school children.
“On one side is the wish to protect childhood, to guard against the addictive pull of some technology, and to raise happy, well-rounded children,” Prince said. “On the other is the fear that those same children could be left behind in a world changing at extraordinary speed.”
The UAE’s approach is not to give young children unrestricted access to AI. Instead, schools teach them how the technology works, where it fails, and when humans should use it.
Teaching kids AI
At Dubai Schools Al Khawaneej, a joint initiative between the Dubai government and K-12 education provider Taaleem Education, students in grades one through three are not expected to use generative AI independently, elementary principal James Efford told Rest of World. Instead, teachers use discussions, stories, and role-play to teach them about AI.
In one activity, a teacher might show children something an AI system got wrong, and ask them to identify what is incorrect or unfair. In another, the teacher pretends to be a robot and asks children to give increasingly precise instructions, teaching them how machines respond to the information they receive.
Most UAE schools are treating AI as a form of literacy rather than technical training.
Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority is developing a broader policy framework for digital technology and AI in education. It has a 10-year roadmap to prepare students for rapid technological change with personalized learning.
“Our goal remains to ensure that any integration of technology is developmentally appropriate and supports meaningful learning without replacing the essential non-digital experiences that contribute to children’s growth, well-being and development,” Saeed Kharbash, CEO of policies, research and programmes at KHDA, told Rest of World.
Abu Dhabi’s Department of Education and Knowledge, which is developing the AI education framework for more than 170 private schools in the emirate, did not respond to Rest of World’s request for comment.
AI is also being used to make classrooms more accessible. Jayda Keer, an inclusion and neurodiversity consultant and former head of inclusion at Dubai International Academy, said schools have used AI to simplify texts for students who struggle with complex vocabulary, translate material for students learning English, and create word banks.
Schools are still cautious
The UAE’s embrace of AI does not mean children are being handed ChatGPT and left alone.
Schools monitor apps and use firewalls. Younger children rarely use AI directly, while older students have restricted access to school-approved apps such as Padlet, Toddle, Canva, Mathletics, Times Tables Rock Stars, ClassDojo, Edmentum, and Epic. At least two schools told Rest of World they use MagicSchool for teacher-directed activities, while one uses Microsoft Copilot.
“We do not currently allow students to use public ChatGPT etc. accounts in school. Nor do we define the programme around a particular AI model or specialist hardware platform,” Efford said.
The government plans to train 22,000 teachers to use AI for teaching, assessment, curriculum analysis, and lesson planning.
22,000 teachers will be trained to use AI for teaching, assessment, curriculum analysis, and lesson planning under the UAE government’s plans.
“Teacher training and support is paramount,” Victor R. Lee, who leads the AI + Education program at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, told Rest of World. “This is new territory for teachers, and they have their own unique considerations for how they use it and introduce it to students.” At Dubai Schools Al Khawaneej, teachers receive initial training, weekly briefings, lesson guides, and prompt banks, as well as support from colleagues. School leaders evaluate how AI is being used through classroom observations, student work, and teacher feedback.
“The emphasis is on developing teachers’ pedagogical confidence as much as their technical knowledge,” Efford said. “When should AI be used, when should it not be used, and how do we make sure it deepens rather than replaces thinking.”
Most countries are yet to commit as deeply. A U.K. primary school trained staff before introducing an AI chatbot to pupils, but there’s no national mandate yet. Estonia has started teacher and student training but for older ages.
China is perhaps the only major exception. Its National Workshop on AI-driven Teacher Capacity Building has reached 103 cities over eight years, and trained 2.97 million teachers, according to the country’s education ministry.
Parents want transparency
Several parents who spoke to Rest of World said they weren’t consulted about the introduction of AI in their children’s curricula, but they all supported it. Still, they raised concerns about transparency and accountability.
“I work in IT, so I see firsthand how fundamentally AI is going to change the workplace and society,” said Gigi Thomas, whose son is enrolled in Year 7 at Cambridge High School. “I would actually be more concerned if schools weren’t teaching children about it.”
Thomas and other parents would rather AI support and complement learning than replace it. “I am also mindful of screen time, online safety, and making sure teachers and parents understand the tools children are using,” said Amna Al Almarri, a homemaker whose 8-year-old son is enrolled at Al Mawakeb school.
Bedour Almarri, who works with the Dubai Land Department, has three children between the ages of six and 12 attending Dubai Schools Al Khawaneej. He called for a clear breakdown of the exact tools being used, how much classroom time is spent interacting with AI versus interacting with teachers and peers, and the guidelines teachers enforce regarding academic integrity.
“While I trust that the school uses educational-grade software with privacy filters, I remain cautious about data privacy, how prompts are stored, and whether children can accidentally bypass safety restrictions,” he said.
Edward Tsoi, CEO and co-founder of AI Safety Asia, a nonprofit focused on governance, public policy, and risk mitigation, said children need to struggle with a difficult sentence, sit with a math problem, and write a clumsy first draft to build the reasoning capacity they would need later in life, including to evaluate AI critically.
We’d draw a hard line between teaching AI and handing children an AI tool.”Edward Tsoi, CEO and co-founder of AI Safety Asia
“If we let AI shortcut that struggle before the underlying skill exists, students get fluency with the tool and no muscle underneath it,” he said. “That’s why we’d draw a hard line between teaching AI and handing children an AI tool, which is commonly treated as the same policy when they’re not.”
Can the UAE’s model travel?
The UAE is not the only place where children are already using AI. Schools in India and Singapore have experimented with AI in classrooms, while South Korea introduced and later withdrew AI textbooks. In Colombia, Meta’s AI tools have interfered with learning rather than improving it.
A recent UNICEF report found that children as young as nine in Congo and Mozambique use AI for homework and want more guidance on how to use it safely.
The UAE has advantages many countries lack. Kenya and Pakistan, for example, are using AI partly to address teacher shortages in schools with much larger classes. Kenya has as many as 68 students per teacher, versus the UAE’s two. That makes the UAE’s approach difficult to replicate.
“Different governments have different value bets, and they’re operating under very different structural constraints,” Tsoi said. “The UAE has a comparatively small, centralized, well-resourced public school system with the political will and budget to back a national mandate. Other large, decentralized systems in the U.S. and much of Southeast Asia, for instance, don’t have that, and a mandate that’s achievable in the UAE’s system could not be implemented as effectively elsewhere.”
Additional reporting by Aarti Jhurani in Dubai.
