Editorial | AI policy for schools

The finding by researchers at the University of Technology (UTech) that practically all of Jamaica’s tertiary and secondary students use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in their studies advances the case for a deeper national conversation of the ethical use of AI in the island’s education system.
Indeed, as this newspaper proposed a half year ago, that discussion should be broadened to include a policy on access in classrooms to digital technologies – such as tablets and writing boards – by children at the early childhood and primary levels. Some Jamaican educators, including the president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), Mark Malabver, and Linvern Wright, the former president of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools (JAPSS), believe that the availability of these tools to children should be limited.
Messrs Malabver and Wright are among a small but increasingly vocal movement of educators and researchers who say that too much access to the smart technologies hinders children’s cognitive development.  Thus far, Jamaica’s education policymakers have been largely silent, at least in public, on this question, as well as on the employment of AI in all aspects of the system.
According to this newspaper’s reporting on Sunday, a study by Paul Golding, a professor in information systems at UTech, and Tiou Clarke, a lecturer in the university’s College of Business, found that 100 per cent of students at universities and colleges, and 96 per cent of those who attend high schools, utilise AI tools in academic tasks.  Approximately 87 per cent of faculty admitted to using AI programmes in preparing for classes and other professional tasks.
In a separate study, Professor Golding found that between one half and 60 per cent of secondary students believed that the use of AI improved their “mental acuity”.
“What this means … is that the way we teach, what we teach, the way we assess how students learn, how we learn, will need to change,” Professor Golding said.
That much has been obvious since OpenAI’s public release of ChatGPT more than three years ago, and the capacity of the generative intelligence system to gather, collate, analyse and deliver information in human-like fashion at speed, became apparent. Since then, not only have the capabilities of AI systems improved almost exponentially, but their availability and range of specialisations have exploded.
GENERIC TASK FORCES
Jamaica has established generic task forces on AI which have proposed its embrace in government and across industries. There has, however, been little discussion on how AI should be ethically used in education, beyond basic research.  AI systems can be,  and are, often employed to write essays and research papers.
So far, individual institutions and teachers have largely fashioned their own AI policies on how students can go on using the technologies in their studies. As was made clear by teachers and students quoted by the Sunday Gleaner, the tensions are real – and in need of resolution.
Tertiary institutions, with their greater breadth of academic freedom and operating regimes, may have capacity, and room, to independently determine how to respond to the opportunities, threats and challenges posed by AI. However, at primary and secondary schools, with national curricula and standardised testing, a clear and coherent policy on the use of AI, which takes into account all the issues about teaching and learning raised by Professor Golding, is necessary.  
This policy dialogue has to be led by the education ministry, with the intent of extracting the value inherent in AI technologies while balancing the integrity of the learning process.
At the same time, the ministry should use the opportunity of this review to address the concerns raised by Messrs Malabver and Wright about the effect on younger children’s development of too much access to digital technologies.
The educators were, in part, responding to moves in some northern European countries, including Sweden and Denmark, to cut back on the wide availability of smart devices to students in their early childhood systems. At this level, the education systems in these countries are again emphasising reading and writing and the practising of handwriting in traditional books.  The pendulum, they say, had swung too far in the opposite direction.
The wide availability and use of smart technologies in pre-primary and primary schools is, on its face, hardly a problem in Jamaica. But it makes sense for the matter to be discussed and analysed, especially in a context of many Asian jurisdictions, including China and Japan, moving to introduce AI at the earliest points of their education systems.