Primary schools experiment with AI under ‘guard rails’

Considered an early adopter of such technology, she said her school’s focus for professional development for teachers this year is AI literacy.

When asked if she informs parents about the AI tools she uses during lessons, she said she has not done so, but believes the children have told them.

Parents who were interviewed said they are unsure if their children use AI in school, though they are not entirely closed off to the idea if safeguards are in place.

They know that the AI tools on the SLS platform will not expose their children to unregulated content.

Among the nine parents whom The Straits Times spoke to, most raised concerns about open AI models like ChatGPT, fearing overreliance and its impact on children’s critical thinking skills.

Some also said they are already grappling with limiting the amount of screen time children have from an early age, which adds to their reservations about increased technology use for learning.

One parent, who declined to be named, said her Primary 5 son’s mother tongue language teacher assigned pupils homework requiring the use of ChatGPT earlier in 2026.

Pupils were tasked to use ChatGPT at home to generate ideas for their composition, and clean up grammatical errors.

“We restrict his access to devices at home, and I was shocked that he was asked to use AI. He had never used it before and was unsure of what to do,” said the parent.

When she called the school to seek clarification, the teacher said she had been using the AI tool to encourage pupils to be more creative in generating ideas for their storylines.

“I am not comfortable with my son using ChatGPT unsupervised. I feel this is not the age, perhaps when he is a bit older or in secondary school,” said the mother.

Mr Ramesh Kumar, 47, who has three children in primary school, feels that at a young age, children should not be exposed to open AI models where there are no safeguards to prevent access to inappropriate content.

At home, his Primary 5 twins, a boy and a girl, use Geniebook – an online learning platform – which uses AI algorithms to customise learning.

“These models have guard rails, which permit what you can or cannot say, what you can and cannot do,” said the cybersecurity consultant.

Mr Ramesh, who also has a daughter in Primary 1, said schools should inform parents about how AI is used in lessons, so they are aware of what their children are exposed to.

An MOE spokesman said it recognises that there are risks when young children use AI.

In response to queries from ST, the ministry said teachers receive training to discern when to use or not use AI, and that it is used only when it benefits rather than replaces learning.

Introduced gradually under close teacher supervision, the AI tools pupils are exposed to in primary school are not general-purpose ones, said the spokesman, but those developed by MOE and accessed through SLS.

MOE also provides educators with guidelines when using AI-enabled tools that are not on SLS, he said.

Every school can get help with edtech and AI from two officers from the MOE headquarters.

“At the end of their primary school education, students would have had the opportunities to learn about AI – be aware of AI’s presence, understand its risks posed by misinformation and inaccurate output,” said the spokesman.

He added that MOE will provide parents with more resources in guiding their child’s use of AI.

A teacher from another primary school told ST that in recent years, AI has been used in upper primary classes in her school for different subjects.

For example, in a social studies lesson, her colleague programmed an AI chatbot to take on the personas of historical figures like Lee Kuan Yew. Under the teacher’s supervision, pupils then interacted with these profiles to discuss their experiences during previous elections.

Such lessons allow for a more engaging learning experience, compared with reading about these figures in textbooks or articles, she said.

In a maths lesson, another teacher used an AI chatbot programmed with guard rails, to help pupils deepen their learning on the topic of angles in triangles.

The chatbot asked pupils questions to assess their mastery of concepts, to pace their learning accordingly.

In all these instances, the teacher said the AI tools used were either those integrated in SLS or whitelisted by MOE. They were used only when they added value to learning, she said, and under teacher supervision.

“You should not use AI or edtech tools just for the sake of using them, especially if it can be done just as well on pen and paper. It has to be meaningful, and guard rails have to be in place to ensure appropriate use,” she added.