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Good practice Imported

Costa Rica's National Ethical-AI Guide for Teachers

Costa Rica · San José · See the Costa Rica profile · See the San José profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 59% 47/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Costa Rica's Ministry of Education, with UNESCO, the UN system and ULACIT, launched a seven-chapter national guide in February 2026 setting ethical-use principles — student data protection, bias reduction, responsible prompting — for AI use by the country's 65,000 public teachers

65,000
Public teachers targeted by the national guide
1,000,000
Students reached nationally (estimated)
7
Chapters in the national guide
Costa Rica's National Ethical-AI Guide for Teachers

Details

Promoter
Ministerio de Educación Pública (MEP), UNESCO, United Nations System in Costa Rica, ULACIT
Period
Launched February 2026
Keywords
AI governance, teacher guidance, data protection, education policy

Context

Costa Rica's Ministerio de Educación Pública (MEP), in a public-private partnership with the university ULACIT and backed by UNESCO and the United Nations System in Costa Rica, launched the "Guía para el uso ético y responsable de la Inteligencia Artificial" on 22 February 2026.

Objectives

The seven-chapter guide sets ethical-use principles for student data, criteria to reduce bias, discrimination and inappropriate AI-generated content, and practical classroom guidance on prompt-writing and project design — explicitly framed as supporting, not replacing, teacher professional judgment.

Activities

The guide targets Costa Rica's full public teaching corps of roughly 65,000 teachers, reaching an estimated one million students nationally. It was corroborated by the UN Costa Rica office, MEP's own announcement, ULACIT's account of the partnership, and independent coverage from the Costa Rican newspaper La Teja; the primary document is publicly available as a PDF.

Conclusions

As a governance document launched only in February 2026, no usage or outcome data exists yet. One claim repeated in Costa Rican press coverage — that AI can improve learning outcomes by up to 30% in maths and science — could not be traced to a specific study and is treated here as an unverified promotional claim, not a fact; it was not used to justify this practice's evidence score.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year)
Staffing & skills
Ministerio de Educación Pública (MEP) policy team, ULACIT university partner (public-private partnership), UNESCO and United Nations System in Costa Rica technical backing

Conditions for success

  • National ministerial mandate reaching the full public teaching corps
  • Explicit framing as supporting, not replacing, teacher professional judgment
  • Publicly available primary document (PDF) for transparency

Common failure modes

  • No usage or outcome data exists yet, since the guide only launched in February 2026
  • A widely repeated '30% improvement' claim in press coverage could not be traced to a specific study

Where it fits

Governance type
national ministry of education, public-private partnership
Scale
national (65,000 teachers, ~1M students)
Income level
Costa Rica, upper-middle income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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