Opportunities, Challenges & Realities for the Future of Learning

Can AI close learning gaps?

Across Europe and Central Asia, many students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds or developing countries, are struggling to master basic literacy, numeracy and digital skills. The COVID-19 pandemic deepened these divides, threatening productivity and long-term economic development.

Now, AI is emerging as a potential gamechanger and equalizer. By offering personalized instruction, real-time feedback and adaptive learning tools, could AI help students catch up, stay engaged and reach their full potential? Could it free up teachers from tedious administrative tasks?

Ethical approach & collaborative governance

In her opening remarks, ECA Education Practice Manager Rita Almeida outlined AI’s potential advantages while also addressing a host of hurdles.

Among them – the need for responsible governance and high-quality data infrastructure with consent and equity safeguards, as well as the importance of fostering human skills such as creativity and critical thinking in an increasingly automated world.

“Ethics must be fully integrated from the start and not treated as a footnote,” Almeida said. “Think of the World Bank as a partner with you in this journey.”

In a keynote presentation, World Bank Senior Education Specialist Cristobal Cobo highlighted the need for capacity-building to train and support teachers, the prioritization of evidence-based policies, and the importance of working together to define operating principles.

“We need a collaborative governance, it makes little sense to work in isolation to provide the rules of the game,” he said.

Countries share experiences

In a series of panel discussions, countries candidly shared insights from their respective AI-in-education journeys, with some just starting out and others well on their way.

A snapshot:

Among those at an initial stage is Moldova, which is currently implementing a 2024-2027 action plan for digital education to pave the way for AI integration down the road.

In terms of AI, “our schools, our teachers, our students, they are trying, they are piloting some solutions, but we want to ensure that we have a strategic view and can advise them in this area,” said Victoria Musienco who heads the ICT service at Moldova’s Ministry of Education and Research.

Türkiye has launched a national AI strategy that takes a whole-government approach and has made strides in integrating AI in schools, said Sümeyye Hatice Eral of the Ministry of National Education.

This includes offering teachers online and on-site upskilling training – as well as guidelines – on how to safely integrate AI. At a student level, elective AI courses are offered for older children, she said.

With 18 million students and more than one million teachers, data privacy is a key concern, as is developing Turkish Large Language Models (LLMs), Eral added, raising issues that many other countries also consider top priorities.

Contributing experiences from northern Europe were neighbors Finland and Estonia, with Central Europe’s Austria and Romania also offering key insights.

Austria, for example, shared that it has piloted AI in 100 schools.

Estonia, meanwhile, said it was building upon its “Tiger Leap” digitization program in the 1990s to integrate AI through high school pilot programs in conjunction with the private sector, and that it was training teachers.