Four in ten young Europeans aged 16 to 24 used generative AI for formal education in 2025. Only 29.7% of EU teachers surveyed in TALIS 2024 had taken any professional development on AI for teaching and learning.
Those two numbers sit side by side in a pair of reports the European Commission published on 22 September. One, a Eurydice comparison of 38 education systems, looks at how digital education and AI are being built into schools. The other, a review titled Friend or foe?, looks at what the evidence says generative AI does to learning.
Read together, they describe a familiar shape. Pupils are already using the tools. Policy is catching up. The people expected to teach pupils how to use AI well are mostly being left to work it out themselves.
Policy is spreading faster than practice
The Eurydice report finds that 24 education systems now report at least one top-level policy framework addressing AI or other emerging technologies in school education. Most of those references sit inside wider digital strategies rather than dedicated plans for AI in education. More than half of systems have adopted guidelines on responsible and effective use of AI in teaching and learning.
The curriculum is further behind. In around one third of systems, national curricula include AI-related competences at lower secondary level, usually inside a subject dedicated to digital education. Teacher education is thinner still. Only seven systems explicitly include safe and ethical use of AI in the digital competence frameworks for initial teacher education. Sixteen include it in frameworks for continuing professional development.
The Commission's own summary is direct: AI policies are developing, but implementation is still at an early stage.
Performance is not the same as learning
The Friend or foe? review makes the point schools most need to hear. AI can improve performance, the Commission says, but this does not necessarily mean better learning. Pupils are more likely to benefit when AI supports their own thinking and they engage actively with the content. The review also raises concern that over-reliance could affect the development of critical thinking, because pupils may hand AI the very tasks that build knowledge and reasoning.
That distinction changes what an AI lesson is for. A pupil who produces a polished answer with AI has shown that the tool works. They have not necessarily shown that they understand the topic, or that they could judge whether the answer was right.
TALIS adds a further detail. Teachers generally see benefits in digital technology, but they are more sceptical about the educational benefits of AI. That scepticism is useful. A teacher who doubts a tool is often the person best placed to show pupils how to question it.
What a school can do before the system catches up
The Commission says the findings will feed into a forthcoming Education Package covering basic skills, teachers and digital infrastructure. That will take time. Schools in and beyond Europe can act on the gaps now.
Find out who has had any training. Not a policy briefing: time spent trying AI on a real lesson and discussing what to keep, edit or reject. If the answer is a handful of enthusiasts, plan for the rest of the staff.
Check where pupils are taught to judge AI, not just use it. If AI appears only in a digital skills or computing lesson, ask where pupils check a generated claim in history, test an explanation in science or decide what counts as their own writing in English.
Separate performance from learning in your own tasks. For each department, name one task where AI may help and one where the point is that pupils do the thinking themselves. Make the difference visible to pupils.
The reports describe national systems, but the gap they find is closed one staffroom at a time.
Sources: European Commission, New reports examine how AI and digital technologies are shaping education in Europe, 22 September 2026; Eurydice, Digital education at school in Europe 2026, 22 September 2026. Eurydice policy data covers 38 education systems in the 2024/25 school year, so recent national changes may not appear.