Schools in England waiting for the curriculum review to tell them what to teach about AI may have missed something. Some of it is already statutory.
In a written answer on 23 October, the Department for Education set it out plainly. The updated relationships, sex and health education guidance, mandatory since 1 September 2026, strengthens learning about the online world. In secondary education, that includes “critical thinking in relation to emerging technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and AI chatbots, deepfakes, misinformation and disinformation.”
That is a requirement now, not a proposal.
What is coming
The same answer, and another on 21 October, confirmed the next step. The government has accepted the Curriculum and Assessment Review's recommendations to strengthen media and digital literacy, and expects to consult publicly on revised programmes of study, including media and digital literacy and critical thinking, “later this year”.
A third answer, on 19 October, said the refreshed curriculum will include “the knowledge needed to engage with artificial intelligence (AI) safely, responsibly and in an age-appropriate way”, with all proposed content subject to public consultation.
The Education Secretary, Lucy Powell, framed the direction in a speech to school trust leaders on 15 October. AI brings opportunities, she said, from children's learning to staff workloads, “But AI raises big questions too, questions I intend to answer.” She named the headaches schools already face: homework and project work, and AI-written complaints flooding inboxes. And she set out a principle: “I want our kids to master technology, not be mastered by it.”
The same speech announced that oracy will have equal status with reading and writing as a new strand of the English curriculum, explicitly linked to AI: “with AI on the rise, we need to go harder on the skills that makes us human, like oracy.”
Where this leaves schools
None of this yet tells a school exactly what to teach in each year group. The consultation will do that, and its proposals may change. But the direction is clear enough to plan around.
AI literacy will sit across subjects. Current media literacy is already spread across citizenship, RSHE, English and computing. The answers describe strengthening that, not creating a single AI subject. Schools that map where AI fits in existing subjects now will be ready for whatever the programmes of study say.
Critical thinking is the thread. The phrase recurs in every answer: think critically about information, evaluate evidence, distinguish fact from opinion, question emerging technologies. That is the core of AI literacy, and it is teachable in any subject.
Speaking matters more, not less. The oracy announcement is a reminder that one of the best checks on AI-assisted work is a pupil explaining their thinking out loud. Building that into lessons supports both priorities at once.
Three things to do this term
Check your RSHE coverage against the statutory content. If secondary RSHE does not yet include AI chatbots, deepfakes and misinformation, that is a gap in a mandatory requirement, not an optional extra.
Join up RSHE with the rest of the curriculum. A lesson on deepfakes in RSHE lands better if history is also asking pupils to check a source, and English is asking who wrote a text and how.
Plan to respond to the consultation. When it opens, teachers' experience of what works in the classroom will matter. Keep notes this term on what pupils find hard about judging AI, so your response is grounded in evidence from your own school.
Sources: UK Parliament written answers 35388, 23 October 2026, 34114, 21 October 2026 and 33450, 19 October 2026; DfE, Education Secretary speech at CST Conference 2026, 15 October 2026. Applies to England. The answers give the consultation timing only as “later this year”.