Google is preparing to disable AI tools by default for school-managed student accounts, starting in the US before a worldwide rollout. But even as access to chatbots comes under scrutiny, schools are finding other ways to introduce AI into children’s education. These include teaching them how the technology works and using it to personalise lessons or assess their understanding. A Hyderabad school is already developing a system that does the latter without giving children direct access to chatbots. If students are kept away from the technology while it increasingly influences how they learn, where should the boundaries really lie?
“Performance is getting the answer right today, with the tool. Learning is getting it right months later, on a different problem, without the tool,” said Prof. Karthik Raman of IIT Madras’s Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI. He recommended tests after a gap, unfamiliar problems, or exercises in which students must identify errors in AI-generated solutions. Higher scores during a lesson cannot, by themselves, establish lasting understanding, he added.
The Pravartak Technologies Foundation at IIT Madras has introduced free courses in AI fundamentals for students in Classes VII to XII. Learning what AI is, asking it to complete an assignment, and receiving lessons selected by AI involve different degrees of control, which experts say is the important point to note. Google’s announced restrictions apply to its services on school-managed accounts, rather than every way schools might use the technology. Administrators may enable them, but schools cannot retain Google Search while excluding its built-in AI features, according to Google’s explanation.
Meru International School in Hyderabad said it used AI while restricting students’ access to general-purpose chatbots. Punit Pushkar, who manages its project, described a system for Classes VI to IX that adapts textbook lessons to pupils’ interests. Friction might be explained through football to one child and food to another.
“It is moulded in 30 different ways, which is practically impossible for a teacher to do in a physical classroom,” Pushkar said. The system generates individual exercises based on students’ answers, while restricted websites and textbook-based filters control what they see. Pushkar claimed average student scores had improved by 20 per cent. Meru also teaches Class VIII pupils to frame prompts around their own ideas, although without giving them direct access to general-purpose chatbots.
Prof. Raman argued that students needed to attempt difficult work themselves and learn to check answers before depending on AI. His concern extended to tutors that agreed with incorrect reasoning when students challenge them. Even when a model offers an explanation, a child without a firm grasp of the subject may be unable to recognise a mistake.
Prof. Raman also warned that AI tutors can agree with students’ mistaken reasoning rather than correct it. “The students most exposed are those with the least support around them, who have no one else to check the tutor against.”
Meru’s project can adapt the same lesson for 30 pupils and prepare different exercises according to their responses. Its textbook-based filters restrict the material children receive, but how does the school establish whether every adapted explanation is appropriately challenging and helping the pupil progress?
Prof. Raman’s recommendation is to examine what students can do independently, including whether they can apply a concept to unfamiliar problems or identify a mistake in an AI-generated solution.
This also gave the question of educational inequality another dimension. Prof. P. L. Vishweshwar Rao, formerly of Osmania University and associated with the Telangana Education Commission, has cautioned against technology widening existing gaps. The difference may depend on whether schools have teachers who can examine what these systems produce, rather than merely accept the exercises and scores they generate.
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