On 23 February 2026, the UK Government published its schools white paper “Every Child Achieving and Thriving,” setting out a ten-year vision for education in England under Secretary of State Bridget Phillipson. The paper contains the government’s most explicit AI education commitments to date at school level, building on the earlier DfE AI guidance and EdTech testbed announcements.
Key AI and digital commitments in the white paper include: £23 million committed to a four-year EdTech evidence programme; the launch of an AI Safety and Pedagogy Taskforce bringing together teachers and AI experts; sovereign AI safety and pedagogy benchmarks to be developed; and teacher co-created AI tutoring tools available to schools by 2027, targeting up to 450,000 disadvantaged pupils. Google DeepMind and OpenAI are named as partners. The refreshed national curriculum — for first teaching from 2028 — will embed digital literacy and media literacy across all subjects, alongside oracy and financial literacy.
Teacher training is addressed through the Teaching Training Entitlement (TTE), which will be updated to support teachers in adopting evidence-based approaches to technology and AI. The white paper also confirms that citizenship education will become compulsory in primary schools and that the national curriculum will be digitised as infrastructure for the EdTech sector. These commitments remain policy intentions ahead of legislation; implementation timelines extend to 2027-2028 and curriculum reforms to 2029 for updated GCSEs.