AI at school: Borne promises charter, investments and training

"It's a revolution (...) which is changing everything, including our ways of learning and teaching. National Education is taking hold of it," explains Ms Borne in an interview with Ouest-France.

She specifies that her ministry intends to publish "in the spring a document, a charter" for the ethical use of AI in schools and that a consultation is underway with teachers, parents, students and unions.

The former Prime Minister explains that teachers can use AI to prepare their lessons, but must remain "responsible for the content" or that "we cannot use personal data in the context of a general public AI".

Some teachers believe that delegating work such as grading, which has a direct impact on students' education, to machines and algorithms poses an ethical problem.

Ms. Borne acknowledges that "almost all high school and college students regularly use AI compared to around 20% of teachers", and that training will be offered to the latter to learn how to use it and supervise students' use of it.

Middle and high school students, for their part, will benefit "from the start of the 2025 school year" from online training in AI, the minister continued, "with compulsory sessions for 4th and XNUMXth grade students."

Ms Borne also reported the launch of a "new call for projects" worth 20 million euros to develop "a sovereign, open, scalable AI" to help teachers with "course preparation, assessment or correction of homework, for example".

The call for projects will be launched in the summer of 2025 to have a fully operational tool for the 2026-2027 school year.

At the same time, Ms Borne says that the government wants to "create a generative AI for managers of the 1,2 million National Education staff", like Cassandre, a tool in the Lyon region.

"We are fortunate to have an excellent community of researchers", high-level engineering centres, "excellent training" as well as "very fine unicorns like Mistral. So I have no doubt that we will find good French solutions", concludes the minister.

Mistral, a French generative AI company, announced on Wednesday that it had entered into an "alliance" with ten universities and institutions (including the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers) with the Edtech France association, which brings together the sector, to provide students and teachers with "robust, reliable" and European AI.