The OECD have just released data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) which is the “largest survey of teachers and principals” collecting internationally comparable information from 280,000 educators in schools in 52 countries (across 55 education systems).

Two hundred Australian schools participated in the survey in 2024 and in the latest release of data from TALIS the OECD looks at if, and how, teachers use artificial intelligence.

This data on the use of AI in schools is particularly pertinent for the Australian VET sector where there is currently no data that VDC News is aware of on the use of AI.

While the United Arab Emirates and Singapore lead internationally on the use of AI by teachers in lower secondary schools (75% of teachers in both countries reported use in 2024), Australia is not far behind in 4th position with 66% of teachers reporting that they use AI in their teaching. This is well above the OECD reported average of 36%.

Australian teachers who were surveyed reported that they tended to use AI to:

  • “generate lesson plans or activities (71%)
  • efficiently learn about and summarise a topic (71%), and
  • automatically adjust the difficulty of lesson materials according to students’ learning needs (46%).”

The least frequent use of AI in Australian lower secondary schools is “to help students practice new skills in real-life scenarios (26%), assess or mark student work (15%), and to review data on student participation or performance (9%).”

Among teachers who report that they did not use AI in their teaching in the 12 months prior to the survey, 75% report that they do not have the knowledge and skills to teach using AI (which is the same as the OECD average of 75%) and 25% say that their schools lack the infrastructure to use AI (which is lower than the OECD average: 37%).

Not covered in the OECD report is the fact that the Australian, state and territory governments collaborated on the development of the Australian Framework for Generative AI in Schools which was first released in late 2023 and has since been regularly reviewed and updated. It appears that this Framework has assisted teachers in many Australian schools to understand and ethically use AI in their teaching practices.