When I was at school, there wasn’t any generative AI or chatbots to help you with your homework. Instead, I had my dad, who tried to bury his frustration while telling me for the tenth time how to solve my maths problem. No, I still don’t get it.
Considering I’m only 23, it feels entirely ridiculous to write that today’s students live in a different world. And yet, they do. Within a short space of time, AI has seeped into so many parts of young people’s lives that it’s hard to identify which area is the most concerning. Of course, one area that stands out is education, and the growing fear over young people’s futures is shared by many.
‘I Am Not a Robot’ …
In a viral Instagram video, secondary school teacher Sarah Rhoda states that ‘Privileged children are getting one-to-one support from humans. Disadvantaged children are getting AI bots teaching them about Macbeth.’
The video achieved 700,000 views and 41,000 likes, reflecting how much Rhoda’s concerns resonated, especially with younger audiences.
Rhoda makes an ethical case against AI use, arguing that it’s eating into the teaching profession and giving students ‘cognitive debt.’ Many teachers share her concerns, believing that AI underdevelops critical thinking skills among students.
It seems that everyone from Tony Blair to the Pope has waded in to consider the implications of AI. What makes education a thorny issue is the fact that users are so young and still developing their critical thinking skills. Pope Leo, in his most recent encyclical, shared his fear that: ‘the speed and ease with which answers or summaries can be obtained [when using AI] risk extinguishing the desire to ask questions, which is a process that bears fruit only over time.’
The Genie is Out
But if we park the ethical and moral considerations for a second, we can see that in 2025, according to the National Literacy Trust, 66.5 per cent of young people aged 13-18 reported using generative AI in the UK. While 58 per cent of teachers used it to create lesson resources and 46.4 per cent used it to create comprehension tasks. So, whatever our concerns, we cannot deny that the use of AI in education is already pervasive and used by teachers and students alike. This practical genie is out of the bottle, and has become far too indispensable to be put back.
AI Usage in Private & State Schools
If we accept that AI has infiltrated education and that there’s no way back from this, a bigger question to ask is how different schools are implementing AI and at what rate? This will help to determine how students are being affected by the change.
As Rhoda suggests in her speech, there is a class element to this. Research has already shown that ‘the uneven adoption of AI could exacerbate preexisting attainment gaps between state and private schools over time.’
There is a notable difference between how generative AI is being used in state and private schools. For instance, ChatGPT is used nearly twice as much to help with schoolwork in private schools compared to state schools. One obvious reason for this is that private schools have greater access to digital hardware and can invest more resources into formal AI training for students and teachers.
Without access to digital hardware, state schools and disadvantaged children are unable to reap the benefits of AI assistance in the classroom. This paints a pretty bleak picture for most students in the state sector, especially when AI technology is said to improve learning outcomes by around 6 per cent.
Addressing Educational Inequality
The Government wants AI to support every child and young person to achieve at school. So far, they have taken on a more or less advisory role in bringing this about. This includes guiding schools on how to use AI safely and effectively, and investing in the development of AI tools for teachers and students. They have also set out six standards in July 2025 to close the digital divide by 2030.
However, the Digital Poverty Alliance has called for much stronger action from the Government to ensure equitable access to AI. It has called for a national policy on AI which is to be applied consistently across all schools. They have also asked for more funding for schools, and teacher training on AI, as well as a reevaluation of how assessments are taken in light of AI’s impact on the current assessment model.
In early 2026, the Government launched a schools’ white paper. A big focus of the paper was attainment and attainment gaps. However, there was no mention of the use of AI or the digital divide. This makes it hard to determine how much of a priority the digital divide and AI inequality are for the Government at this stage.
Failing to make AI-induced inequality a priority could be very damaging to disadvantaged students. We saw the impact of poor results in the recent interim NEET report by Tony Sewell — which showed that low attainment in schools is one of the biggest risk factors for being NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training). AI inequality will only exacerbate this.
Despite many concerns around AI, its use in education is widespread and here to stay. Despite my reluctance to admit this, there are clear benefits to adopting and adapting to AI. For one, there probably would have been far fewer arguments in my house if AI had been on standby to help me with my maths homework. However, a concern we cannot afford to ignore is the uneven rollout of AI technology between state and private schools, and how this impacts disadvantaged students.
AI is hard to understand and even harder to regulate. Using it with abandon, without any controls or a national policy, will likely increase existing inequalities. If we don’t act now, we could soon be looking at a future where one class of students excels while another class struggles to keep up. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is, only this time, we really could have done something about it.
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