The OECD has reviewed the global evidence on generative AI in education. The findings are more qualified than either the optimists or the sceptics want to acknowledge.
The OECD Digital Education Outlook 2026, published in January, synthesises emerging research on generative AI across teaching, learning and institutional management. It finds genuine promise in specific contexts, significant limitations in others, and a consistent gap between what the technology can do and what it actually does when deployed without clear pedagogical purpose.
The OECD Digital Education Outlook 2026, published in January and described as the most comprehensive synthesis of emerging generative AI research in education produced by an international body to date, reaches conclusions that sit awkwardly with both the enthusiastic adoption case and the precautionary rejection case. The core finding is that generative AI can support learning when guided by clear teaching principles, but that when designed or used without pedagogical guidance, outsourcing tasks to AI simply enhances performance with no real learning gains. The distinction is straightforward