UNESCO/Saskia Maitrepierre
The Ministerial Statement, presented at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 8 September during Digital Learning Week 2026, sets out shared priorities for ensuring that the terms on which AI is integrated into education are shaped through deliberative governance, public accountability and respect for the rights of learners and teachers.
Under the theme “Education in the age of AI: Facts | Frictions | Frontiers”, Digital Learning Week 2026 is bringing together over 1,500 participants in Paris and thousands more online, including ministers of education, high-level experts, representatives of the technology industry, educators and students.
The Ministerial Statement acknowledges the profound shifts AI is creating, including changes in how learners think, how teachers exercise professional judgement, and how learning is assessed. It notes that while AI holds the potential to extend access and support learners, these benefits are conditional on deliberative governance, human support and adequate preparation. Crucially, the statement affirms that learning is not served when AI substitutes for human relationships and human judgement.
"The Ministerial Statement is a clarion call for sustaining the public interest, critical understanding, teacher agency, and solidarity. How we integrate AI in education is a matter of public decision and public accountability."
-- Qun Chen
UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education
Eight priorities for action
The Ministerial Statement outlines eight priorities for action, committing to:
Restore public-interest conditions to ensure AI systems are auditable, data portable, and subject to public oversight, even when they reach learners through free tiers, donations, and vendor agreements.
Protect the development of critical understanding by developing and using AI that prompts learners to reason and perform cognitive work, and by investing in AI competencies for teachers and students drawing on UNESCO's twin AI Competency Frameworks.
Cultivate teacher agency through investment in teacher preparation and professional development, and by ensuring that teachers take part in decisions about which systems enter their classrooms. The statement emphasizes that AI must support and not replace their professional contribution and judgement.
Promote age and developmentally appropriate AI and safeguard learners, with approaches grounded in children and young people’s rights, evolving capacities and educational needs, and with the ability to pause or discontinue the use of AI where warranted.
Govern data in education in the public interest, recognizing learners and teachers, and children in particular, as rights-holders over their own data, and involving them in decisions about systems that collect and act on their data.
Integrate equity and inclusion by design, including through inclusive and multilingual design and the capacity to evaluate AI systems across the languages, abilities and contexts of the learners who will use them.
Count the total costs of ownership before adopting AI, favouring interoperability, portability, and open-source systems to ensure that education systems can change course, if needed.
Build and pool AI governance capacity both nationally and regionally to ensure that no education system faces the concentrated supply of AI systems alone.
A call to action
The Statement urges providers of AI systems to provide evidence of educational benefit before deployment, make their systems explainable and auditable, and accept accountability for harm. It also calls upon the international community to support education systems where capacity is least developed, and invites UNESCO to continue to convene global dialogues, monitor how AI is reshaping education’s public purposes, and report on progress and inform policy.
Release of UNESCO survey on AI in higher education
On the first day of Digital Learning Week, UNESCO released the findings of the second annual UNESCO survey on AI in higher education. Conducted among the global network of UNESCO Chairs, the survey found that 93% of academics believe students are using generative AI to produce assignments, while 63% perceive a decline in students’ cognitive capacities.
Most respondents expect their students to use AI for specific assignments or with disclosure, with less than 1% favoring complete prohibition while 2% recommend unrestricted use. Meanwhile, two-thirds of respondents consider that AI guidelines issued by their professional society would be useful or very useful.
UNESCO’s action on AI and education
The Ministerial Statement builds on UNESCO’s work to shape the global agenda on AI and the futures of education through ideas, norms, practice and partnerships.
UNESCO published the first-ever Guidance for generative AI in education and research in 2023, followed in 2024 by AI competency frameworks for students and teachers addressing both the potential and the risks of AI, as a step towards its safe, ethical, inclusive and responsible use.
Since 2024, UNESCO has organized seminars to raise awareness of its AI Competency Frameworks involving participants from more than 100 countries, reaching thousands of educators and policy-makers. UNESCO has also directly supported 58 countries to provide frameworks, curricula and quality-assured training programmes on digital or AI competencies.
This educational effort complements UNESCO’s broader work on the ethical governance of AI, including the first international normative framework on the ethics of AI, adopted by its 194 Member States in 2021.
Digital Learning Week 2026, organized at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, brings together global perspectives on the facts, frictions and frontiers of AI and education, including AI safety and sovereignty, human learning, teacher agency, higher education, and deliberative governance.
A UNESCO working document, Sustaining education as a common good in the age of AI: the case for deliberative governance, as well as six background papers written by experts on topics ranging from AI safety and age-appropriateness to procurement and sovereignty, are being released for public comment and consultation at Digital Learning Week and beyond. The input received will be consolidated into a set of policy briefs, to be published at the next Digital Learning Week in March 2027.
