Children are outsourcing their thinking to AI. The evidence says this is the problem education should be solving.
The OECD's Digital Education Outlook 2026 found that AI tools can boost what children produce without teaching them anything. For the millions of British kids using ChatGPT for homework, that distinction is the whole game.
By Wistl Editorial · · At Home
A child types a maths question into ChatGPT. Eight seconds later, the answer is on the screen. The homework is done. What happened in those eight seconds, the OECD now suggests, is the opposite of learning. The OECD's Digital Education Outlook 2026, published in January, is the most thorough international round-up of what the research actually shows about generative AI in classrooms. Its central finding cuts against most of the marketing aimed at parents. General-purpose AI tools, the OECD writes, "enhance students' performance on tasks" but "do not necessarily lead to learning gains". Offload