Learning practices are changing quickly as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes part of everyday life. These technologies are reshaping how students find information, complete learning tasks, explore creative possibilities, communicate, and form social connections. In response, the OECD and the European Commission, with support from CodeAI (formerly Code.org) and international experts, released a draft AI Literacy Framework in May 2025 to support the integration of AI into teaching and learning with critical judgment, ethical awareness, and clear educational purpose.
The draft framework was informed by extensive global consultation, drawing feedback from over 2000 individuals across a wide range of stakeholder groups, including teachers, education leaders, policymakers, learning designers, NGOs and researchers from over 100 countries representing all continents. Their input has shaped the finalised AI Literacy Framework for Primary and Secondary Education, launched on 18 June 2026 during the European Digital Education Hub (EDEH) flagship event, Collaborate for Impact: Advancing European Digital Education and Skills.
Defining AI literacy for classroom practice
Building on previously established digital competence frameworks, including in AI, the finalised AI Literacy (AILit) Framework places a deliberate emphasis on practical guidance and classroom implementation. It organises AI literacy as a developmental pathway across four domains that reflect how learners encounter AI in everyday life. The framework spans four domains: Engage with AI, Create with AI, Manage AI, and Shape AI—covering awareness, creative use, responsible decision making, and how AI systems are shaped by human values. Across domains, competences integrate relevant knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
Each competence is now supported by Learner Expectations that describe progression across primary and secondary education at basic, intermediate, and advanced levels. Embedded Learning Scenarios translate competences into classroom practice across subjects and contexts, including offline or low‑tech activities that teach AI concepts without requiring direct access to AI tools.
Accompanying exemplar activities demonstrate how to translate the framework into practice, illustrating how competences can be applied across subject types using structured activities and modeling key skills.
These updates align with stakeholder feedback which identified a need to provide teachers with a flexible, classroom‑ready resource rather than introducing an additional subject area.
Supporting agency, judgment, and well‑being
Consultation participants also emphasized that AI literacy must support learners’ well‑being and agency alongside their technical understanding. In response, the updated framework places greater emphasis on metacognition, reflection, and self‑regulation, strengthening how learners are supported to think critically about how AI influences their learning, choices, and relationships, and to set healthy boundaries around its use.
Across domains, competences reinforce that AI systems are not human and cannot replace human judgment, care, or relationships. Learners develop the capacity to decide not only how to use AI, but when not to use it, recognising that refusal or limitation can be a responsible and informed choice.
As in the draft framework, ethical considerations remain embedded across all domains and competences rather than treated as a standalone topic. Learners engage with questions of fairness, bias, transparency, privacy, accountability, and environmental impact within authentic learning contexts, reflecting the reality that ethical judgment is inseparable from learning with and about AI.
Together, this focus on agency, judgment, and well‑being ensures that AI literacy supports responsible and reflective participation in an AI‑shaped world.
Join our Webinars
Following the launch, two audience-specific webinars will help stakeholders explore how the Framework can be used in practice. The webinars will feature members of the AI Literacy expert group sharing perspectives from their own work and experience, including insights that helped shape the AILit Framework.
The first webinar will focus on practical approaches for using the Framework in education settings. The second one will focus on system-level perspectives and priorities for AI literacy in education. Both webinars will include a concise presentation of the Framework, short speaker presentations, and panel discussions.
Participants may register for one or both webinars, depending on their role, interests, and availability. Further information, including registration, is available here: https://ailiteracyframework.org/webinars/.
