In Public First's survey of 4,021 people aged 11 to 24 in England, carried out in August 2026, 21 per cent of secondary pupils said their school has rules on AI that they could explain. The rest do not know what the rules are, and in many schools neither do the staff.
KCSIE 2026 asks that all staff are trained in safeguarding and online safety, including their part in filtering and monitoring, at induction and at least once a year. Its training paragraphs do not mention AI. The DfE's free Using AI in education settings modules, written by the Chartered College of Teaching with Chiltern Learning Trust, teach staff to use AI well, and they are the same for every school. Neither tells a staffroom which rules reach AI here and who holds each one.
That is what the INSET pack does. A staff session of 45 to 60 minutes, ready to run: 21 slides with facilitator notes, three ten-minute inserts for exams, data protection and safeguarding, and a one-page attendance log that becomes the training record.
It covers four things. The rules that already govern a school and now reach AI: KCSIE, JCQ, UK GDPR and the DfE's product safety standards, with governors over all of them. Who in the building holds each one. The check every AI answer needs, done in pairs on printed cards against a source the school already trusts, because the DfE's line is that any content produced requires critical judgement to check for appropriateness and accuracy. And the school's own rules, copied from its AI policy word for word, or from the four rules poster where there is no policy yet.
No AI writes any of it. The pack is free to download with no sign-up, under a licence that lets a school adapt and share it in education. Anyone who misses the session can take the free 30-minute online course on the same ground and bring back a certificate for the log.
The pack: https://schoolaigovernance.co.uk/templates/inset-pack
The free course, and the paid staff course that teaches a school's own staff their own rules by name with a record at the end, are on the Training page: https://schoolaigovernance.co.uk/training
Wes Akram is an exams officer, data manager and DPO at a secondary school, and the author of The School AI Governance Handbook: for the slightly overwhelmed. Everything on schoolaigovernance.co.uk is free.
The facts behind this article
Every claim above is numbered to one of these records. Each gives the source’s own words where it can, the paragraph or section, and the date it was last read.
- 01
Public First's poll for the report was an online survey of 4,021 people aged 11 to 24 in England, carried out from 18 to 27 August 2026, weighted by age, gender and region. "Secondary" means Years 7 to 11; "college" means college and school sixth form. Unweighted bases: 1,326 secondary pupils and 930 college and sixth form students unless a table says otherwise.
AI in Education: polling tables (Public First for Seldon and Bunting), methodology sheet. Dated 22 September 2026. Read 27 September 2026.
- 02
Only 21 per cent of secondary pupils say their school has rules on AI they could explain.
AI in Education: polling tables (Public First for Seldon and Bunting), Table 67. Dated 22 September 2026. Read 26 September 2026.
- 03
All staff should receive safeguarding and child protection training, including online safety and an understanding of their roles in filtering and monitoring, at induction, with updates as required and at least annually. The training paragraphs do not mention AI.
“as required, and at least annually”
Keeping children safe in education 2026, paragraphs 12, 153 and 154 (paragraph 12 points to 173 to 177 for filtering and monitoring). Dated 7 July 2026. Read 8 November 2026.
- 04
The DfE's "Using AI in education settings" materials are four modules and a leaders' pack, developed by the Chiltern Learning Trust and the Chartered College of Teaching, first published 10 June 2025 and updated 19 May 2026. They are free, ungated, under the Open Government Licence, and the DfE says they can also be adapted.
“can also be adapted”
Using AI in education settings: support materials, collection page. Dated 19 May 2026. Read 8 November 2026.
- 05
Any content produced by generative AI requires critical judgement to check for appropriateness and accuracy, and the quality of any final document remains the responsibility of the professional who produced it and their organisation.
“Any content produced requires critical judgement to check for appropriateness and accuracy”
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education, guidance text. Dated 12 August 2025. Read 28 September 2026.