We are asking the wrong questions about AI

Every few weeks, a leader asks me some version of the same question. Which AI detector should we use? Should we ban it? Which tool should we buy for teachers?

I understand why. AI arrived in our schools without asking permission. Students found it first. Then some teachers, quietly. Leaders were left reacting to individual cases: an essay that seemed too good, a worried parent, an excited colleague with a new app.

But I think we are asking the wrong questions.

The question is not "Can we catch them?"

If a task can be completed perfectly by a machine in ten seconds, what exactly was that task measuring? If our main response to a powerful new tool is to try to police it, what are we teaching students about the world they are about to enter?

I am not arguing that anything goes. Honesty matters. Original thinking matters. But the answer cannot only be detection software and suspicion. It has to include better tasks, more thinking done in the room, more students explaining how they reached an answer, and a school culture where using AI openly and well is something you can talk about rather than hide.

The question is not "Which tool?"

Tools change every few months. A policy written around a product is out of date before the ink is dry. What lasts is a set of principles that the whole school understands and can apply to whatever comes next.

What is AI for in our school? When may students use it, and how should they acknowledge it? What must staff never put into it, because it belongs to a child or a colleague? How will we keep learning honest? And how will we keep learning ourselves, when none of us has all the answers?

A school that can answer those five questions on a single page, in plain language, is better prepared than a school with an expensive licence and no shared understanding.

The real question

The question that matters most is the one we have always asked about every change in education: does this help our students learn, think and grow into good people?

If the answer is yes, we should help teachers use it with confidence. If the answer is no, we should have the courage to say so. And if we do not yet know, we should say that honestly too, try things carefully and keep talking.

AI will not decide what kind of schools we become. We will.