On Friday 19th September 2025, we held an event in collaboration with Children’s Parliament and the Scottish AI Alliance.
“AI in Scottish Schools” addressed teachers, educators, researchers, and policymakers and highlighted work introducing AI literacy for educators and learners and having children’s voices and rights at its heart.
Our team at Data Education in Schools team introduced the “Teaching Responsible Artificial Intelligence in Schools” website (TRAILS.scot) and resources, and our AI Teachers in Residence programme, which brings six secondary teachers together to conduct innovative, interdisciplinary work on the use of AI at their respective schools. We showcased some of the TRAILS resources and activities, including the Teach AI Literacy Handbook, which contains an AI curriculum framework relating to Curriculum for Excellence outcomes, our Movie Night Activity and an AI and Philosophy lesson plan created by one of our AI Teachers in Residence.
The Children’s Parliament team then introduced their Exploring Children’s Rights & AI project and Children’s Rights & AI Teaching Pack, created in partnership with the Scottish AI Alliance and The Alan Turing Institute and co-designed with children across Scotland. The Teaching Pack contains six full lesson plans aimed at Primary 5-7 and explores a range of themes, such as how AI uses data, concepts around AI and fairness, privacy, rights and the future of technology.
We were happy to meet a full room of 48 attendees at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, and an engaged cohort of 147 online participants, including primary and secondary teachers, headteachers, researchers, and policymakers. We are looking forward to following up on the positive feedback we received and keeping our to bring responsible AI literacy into the school, having children’s rights at heart.
