Scotland's National 'AI in Schools: Guidelines and Guardrails'

At the March 2025 Reykjavik International Summit on the Teaching Profession, the Scottish Government committed to develop national AI-in-education guidance; it published "Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Schools: Guidelines and Guardrails" on 25 March 2026, developed with Education Scotland, local authorities and young people.

The guidance is built on the OECD's "Opportunities, guidelines and guardrails for effective and equitable use of AI in education" framework and includes a dedicated data-protection section: it requires a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) before any AI tool that processes personal data is introduced, mandates local-authority approval of tools, and bars sharing pupil data with unverified or insecure systems.

The guidance is accompanied by a Children's Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment tied to the incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law, and sits within Scotland's wider AI Strategy 2026–2031.

The guidance is explicitly non-statutory ("advice and guidance," not mandatory regulation), sets no enforcement mechanism, and leaves local authorities discretion to set their own compliant policies; it states it will be updated as evidence evolves.

Read the full analysis: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-guidelines-guardrails-use-artificial-intelligence-ai-schools/