A pupil can now ask a phone to explain an unfamiliar word, solve a maths question or draft a paragraph. The answer may arrive in seconds. The difficult part has not disappeared: the pupil still needs to know whether that answer makes sense, and the teacher still needs to know whether the pupil has learned anything.
That is why schools should talk about artificial intelligence, or AI, without treating it as either a miracle or a threat that can be kept outside the gate. The real question is how to protect good teaching while helping children grow up in the world they will actually enter.
Why should a school think about AI now?
Even a school with no classroom computers will meet AI through homework, search tools and the phones pupils use outside school. A rule that simply says “never use it” may be hard to understand or enforce. Silence leaves teachers to make separate decisions and pupils to guess what is acceptable.
A better starting point is to agree on the learning you want to protect. If a pupil is practising multiplication, asking a tool for every answer defeats the exercise. If a pupil is comparing two explanations of a science idea, a tool may provide one explanation to examine, but the pupil should still question it and explain the idea in their own words.
Nigeria's National EdTech Strategy for 2025–2030 names teacher development, access to devices and safe use of AI among its priorities. That does not mean every school must rush to buy technology. It means the conversation about useful, safe learning tools is already part of education planning.
What should pupils learn before they trust an AI answer?
Teach pupils to pause. Ask: Who gave this answer? Can I check it in a textbook, a lesson or another reliable source? What steps are missing? Would I still know how to solve the problem without the tool?
These questions are useful even when an answer sounds confident. AI can produce mistakes, oversimplify a topic or miss the local context of a question. A pupil who learns to inspect an answer becomes a stronger learner than one who only learns how to copy it.
Schools can make expectations clear by separating practice from finished work. A teacher might let older pupils compare a tool's explanation with their own attempt during a supervised lesson. The same teacher may ask for a handwritten first attempt on homework. Pupils need to know when a tool is helping them learn and when it is doing the thinking they were supposed to practise.
Privacy matters too. A pupil's name, grades, personal story or photograph should not be placed into an unfamiliar tool merely to get a quicker response. UNESCO's guidance on generative AI in education urges a human-centred approach, attention to age and protection of personal information. A school policy can express that in plain words families and staff will understand.
Does preparing for AI mean replacing teachers?
No. A teacher notices the hesitation behind a wrong answer, chooses an example that fits a particular class and decides when to slow down. Those are teaching decisions, not tasks to hand away without thought.
UNESCO's 2024 framework for teachers describes 15 competencies across five areas, including ethics, human judgement and teaching practice. The point for a principal is simple: learning to use AI well involves far more than learning the buttons on one app. Teachers need room to question a tool's output and the confidence to reject it when it does not suit their pupils.
Support teachers by giving them time to discuss what they have tried. Which kind of explanation helped? What was inaccurate? Where did a pupil seem to copy an answer without understanding it? A shared conversation is more useful than sending staff a list of tools and telling them to keep up.
What about schools with limited power or internet?
AI plans have to match a school's reality. UNESCO's 2023 education technology report estimated that 40% of primary schools and 50% of lower-secondary schools worldwide were connected to the internet. Those are global figures, not figures for Nigerian schools, but they are a reminder that access varies widely. A school should never make a child's learning depend on a connection or device that is not reliably available.
Start with teaching habits that work in any classroom: clear explanations, questions that uncover misunderstanding and discussion that asks pupils to defend an answer. If a digital tool supports those habits, choose a small use case and test it with staff. Keep a workable plan for the days when the power or connection fails.
The best first question is not “How much AI can we add?” It is “Which part of our teaching needs better support?” A school may choose to begin with teachers' preparation rather than putting a screen in front of every child.
How can a school make a sensible first move?
Pick one class and one topic. Ask a teacher to identify the hardest part of preparing or assessing that topic. Agree on what good work would look like. Try a tool with the teacher, review the material together and ask whether it actually helped pupils understand more clearly. If it adds confusion or extra work, change course.
Rubriix gives schools a practical place to start. It prepares lesson notes, worked examples and practice questions from the school's scheme of work, and teachers review and edit them before class. Rubriix also connects assessments to the topics being taught. The promise is useful support for teaching, with the school's staff still making the decisions.
Read how Rubriix supports lesson planning and what Rubriix does. If you want to explore a careful first step for your school, talk to the Rubriix team. You can also learn who writes this blog.
