Ukraine's Wartime AI-in-Education Guidance — A Four-Layer Soft-Law Framework

On 23 May 2024, Ukraine's Ministry of Education and Science, working with the Ministry of Digital Transformation, published recommendations for teachers and students on using artificial intelligence in schools. The guidance was issued as Ukraine continued to operate its education system under wartime conditions, including mass school displacement and disrupted access to in-person instruction.

Give teachers and students practical guidance on classroom AI integration — including prompt-writing techniques, safety protocols and curated lists of recommended AI tools — while establishing risk-based rules for higher-stakes uses.

A 2026 academic analysis characterises Ukraine's approach as a deliberate choice of non-binding soft law over formal legislation, built in four layers: national guidance from the two ministries; sector-level codes translating principles into institutional templates; institutional policies governing data handling and procurement; and course-level rules such as syllabus clauses. The guidance applies an EU AI Act-aligned risk classification that flags high-stakes uses — admissions, grading, behavioural monitoring — as high-risk, and sets age thresholds of 13 for independent use, with parental consent required between ages 13 and 18. Ukraine has used AI-based tools such as speech-to-text and visual generation specifically to support students with special educational needs and children displaced by the conflict.

The four-layer soft-law framework is publicly documented and has been independently reported by a news agency and analysed academically, with concrete inclusion applications (speech-to-text and visual generation for displaced and special-needs students) distinct from generic guidance.

The soft-law approach is explicitly a trade-off rather than a claim of comprehensiveness: the analysis frames it as pragmatic given wartime capacity constraints, while advising institutions not to wait for a formal statute or outsource pedagogical decisions to technology vendors — an acknowledgement that formal, binding regulation has not yet followed the initial guidance.