New Zealand teachers use AI more than most OECD countries
New Zealand teachers report widespread use of AI, despite lagging behind other countries for developing a national AI strategy and framework.
Over two-thirds (69 percent) of teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand reported using AI in the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2024.
The OECD average was just 36 percent, placing us third in the world for teachers’ AI use, behind the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore (75 percent).
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For the survey, AI was defined as computer models that “perform tasks traditionally thought to involve human intelligence. This can include making predictions, suggestion decisions, or generating texts”.
This definition included natural language processing, speech recognition, analysing learning and mining data, and recognising and processing images.
New Zealand teachers’ reported AI use cases were comparable to international teachers’ use cases. Internationally, teachers who use AI most commonly use it to summarise and learn about topics (68 percent), followed by generating lesson plans (64 percent). By comparison, 74 percent of New Zealand teachers who use AI, use it to summarise and learn about topics, and 75 percent employ AI to generate lesson plans.
Conversely, New Zealand teachers who use AI are less likely to assess or mark student work with the technology (14 percent) compared to teachers who use AI internationally (26 percent).
Related School News article: Five considerations before implementing AI in the classroom.
Though New Zealand’s results should be interpreted cautiously due to the higher chance of non-response bias from a low response rate, previous surveys support the finding that AI is widely used by teachers in New Zealand.
Internationally, primary school teachers were less likely to report using AI compared to secondary school teachers. That finding holds true in New Zealand; an NZCER survey conducted around the same time found around half of primary teachers in New Zealand reported using AI frequently, though they noted the potential for sample bias due to the voluntary nature of the survey.
The same survey found strong demand for PLD on AI use among primary teachers, and a high use of free, lower-quality versions of AI technologies in schools.
Related School News article: How schools can use AI to improve student attendance.
David Coblentz, author of the NZCER survey of AI use in primary schools said of his findings: “Teachers need culturally supportive, centralised policy and guidance on safe and ethical use of AI in the classroom. Part of this needs to be integrating critical literacy for students – helping them understand exactly what these tools are, their inbuilt biases and how to think critically about what something like ChatGPT produces.”
Coblentz’s recommendation to integrate AI literacy into education mirrors Singapore’s approach.
In 2019, Singapore launched the National AI Strategy, which includes teaching students about how AI works, its benefits and risks, and ethical considerations. Singapore has also been progressively releasing AI-enabled features on the Singapore Student Learning Space, their national teaching and learning platform. They have included ethical safeguards and pedagogical considerations in these features, which include machine learning models that analyse student responses and provide personalised learning recommendations.
Related School News article: Unexpected nation leading the way with AI rollout in schools.
By comparison, New Zealand published a national AI strategy in July this year, making us the last OECD country to do so. However, the document released by the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment disregards the education sector.
Currently, education professionals are provided with some guidance on the Ministry of Education’s website, last updated in November 2024. The technology learning area of the current 2007 NZC includes “computational thinking for digital technologies” from Years 1 to 8. The refreshed draft curriculum out for consultation includes a digital technologies section in the Technology learning area, which “focuses on data, algorithms, and logic and how digital tools are designed and used.” The government has also announced plans for Generative AI to become a year 13 subject from 2028.
