AI in Australian educational institutions - The key roles for educators

Artificial intelligence (AI) presents a transformative opportunity for Australian schools and educational institutions, but only if educators remain central to its design, implementation, and interpretation.

This paper highlights that AI literacy is essential for both educators and students. When institutions invest in educator capability, redesign workflows, and tackle equity barriers, AI can reduce workloads and support more personalised learning. However, without this human-centred approach, AI risks becoming just another administrative burden.

Ultimately, the future of AI in education depends less on the technology itself and more on the people who guide its use and the policies that empower them to do so effectively.

Putting educators at the centre of AI in practice

Many government departments have issued online guides such as AI in schools, which outlines how educators and students are using AI technologies to support the teaching and learning cycle, as well as administrative tasks. While AI’s capabilities continue to evolve rapidly, its effectiveness in schools ultimately hinges on human decision-making. Educators must determine when, why, and how AI is used, ensuring that technologies align with learning goals, ethical principles, and student wellbeing. AI supports educators; it does not replace them.

In Australia, educators have responded relatively quickly to AI, but adoption lags behind global leaders such as the UAE and Singapore. Many Australian educators use AI for planning, resource development, and organisational tasks. Despite AI’s wider possibilities, many educators still engage only at this basic level, missing opportunities to reshape pedagogy or personalise learning.

Recent OECD analysis reinforces that AI’s benefits can only be realised when educators have the professional judgement, knowledge, and ethical framework to guide its integration. The “human-in-the-loop” model remains essential: AI assists but educator oversight is critical.

Drivers and Causes

The human role: Educators shaping learning and ethical gatekeepers

AI can expand the educator’s role, from planning and designing learning to exercising ethical judgement and professional oversight. Educators must check and guide how AI is used in learning, make sure it fits the classroom context, and monitor its impact on fairness and student wellbeing. Many students, especially those from low-income backgrounds, do not have equal access to digital tools, so educators play a key role in making sure AI helps all students rather than widening existing gaps.

A growing need for AI literacy among educators

The demand for AI literacy is a major driver shaping school priorities. Employers across all industries are increasingly listing AI capabilities as foundational skills. Schools must prepare students not only to use AI tools but to understand them.

This requires educators to develop their own AI literacy through formal and informal learning. Educators need structured time and support to move beyond superficial applications of AI and into deeper, more transformative pedagogies. In this evolving context, learning with students concurrently is inevitable, causing a major shift in the role of an educator.

School leadership, both formal and informal, plays a critical role in fostering AI literacy by shaping vision, modelling ethical and informed use, and creating the professional learning conditions that enable staff and students to engage confidentially and critically with emerging technologies.

Structural and community factors

Adoption of AI is limited by some schools perceived rigid curriculum requirements, a focus on subject content over broader skills, resistance from some leaders and peers, and entrenched community expectations that emphasise traditional outcomes like (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) ATAR scores. These pressures tend to limit experimentation with AI and focus practice on maintaining the status quo rather than encouraging innovation.

The digital divide also remains a structural barrier. Uneven access to devices and internet limits the ability of disadvantaged students to engage meaningfully with AI tools outside school hours. Government must take an active and sustained role in reducing the technological divide by ensuring that all students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, have equitable access to digital devices, reliable internet, and the skills needed to participate fully in contemporary learning.

Consequences and implications

Educator workload: Three pathways

The impact of AI on educator workload depends on its application. In practice, AI is typically used to:

1. Increase the volume of output
2. Try different delivery methods and improve quality, and/or
3. Try new ideas and initiatives.

Ultimately, workload reduction depends not on the technology but on human decisions about priorities and trade-offs, particularly what schools choose to stop doing when new tools are introduced.

Teaching and learning

AI’s ability to personalise learning, scaffold language barriers, and provide tailored feedback aligns well with diverse classrooms. However, educators remain essential mediators. AI cannot interpret student emotions, build trust, or adapt to the nuances of wellbeing and social context.

Schools must therefore “measure what matters most” – learning quality, wellbeing, and connection, rather than rely solely on narrow traditional academic metrics such as (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) NAPLAN results. Educator judgement is central to ensuring AI supports these broader outcomes rather than reinforcing outdated assessment models.

Equity considerations

While AI has the potential to support multilingual students, low-SES communities, and learners with additional needs, inequitable access to devices and home connectivity risks widening the gap. Educators must therefore play a proactive role in identifying which tools genuinely support disadvantaged learners and advocate for equitable infrastructure.

Student AI literacy and citizenship

Educators also play a foundational role in shaping student AI literacy. Students must learn to question AI outputs, identify bias, use AI responsibly, and integrate AI into creative and analytical thinking. These competencies cannot be outsourced to technology; they require explicit instruction, modelling, and guided practice led by educators.

Policy implications

Policy Recommendation	Comments
Place educators at the centre of AI strategy	Policies must affirm that educators, not algorithms, make final decisions about learning design, assessment, and student support Professional learning should focus on strengthening educators’ human capabilities: critical judgement, ethical reasoning, and pedagogical design in an AI-rich environment Educators require explicit instruction modelling and guided practice, and this should be an essential element of professional learning Leadership must support educators with the time and flexibility needed to stop outdated tasks when adopting new AI-enabled practices.
Develop system-wide AI literacy frameworks	Provide sustained professional learning, not one-off workshops, to deepen confidence and capability. Professional learning should be immersive, collaborative and ongoing Support local initiatives such as school AI policies and educator-led workshops to scale effective practice.
Redesign workflows to enable workload reduction	System policy should require that whenever AI is introduced, accompanying workload audits identify tasks to be removed or streamlined Research priorities must include studying AI’s impact on educator workload, wellbeing, and burnout, not merely its efficiency gains AI should be used to free educators to deliver human-intensive work: relationship-building, formative assessment, and personalised support.
Address equity through infrastructure and support	Prioritise investment in devices and bandwidth for low-SES and multilingual communities to close the digital divide Provide culturally and linguistically responsive AI tools for students who speak languages other than English Ensure AI procurement processes meet ethical, privacy, and transparency standards that protect student data.
Rethink curriculum and assessment for the AI era	Move away from assessment models that rely on decontextualised recall (this can be easily outsourced to generative AI) Emphasise capabilities such as collaboration, creativity, problem-solving, and ethical reasoning, which require human judgement and socio-emotional learning Provide guidance on integrating AI into authentic assessments while maintaining academic integrity.

 

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The views and opinions expressed in this publication are of the BDO Centre for Education, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of BDO or individual members of the BDO Centre for Education.

About the BDO Centre for Education

The BDO Centre for Education (the Centre) is dedicated to advancing education in Australia by fostering collaboration among experts, stakeholders, and sectors within the field. The Centre’s mission is to promote excellence and equity, enabling all Australians to become confident and creative individuals, successful learners, and active and informed community members. Through critical analysis, evidence-based solutions, and informed advocacy, we strive to address the challenges facing education in the 2020s as outlined in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (2019). Our commitment to knowledge dissemination, outreach and inclusivity drives us to shape public opinion and advocate for evidence-based education policies, creating a stronger, more inclusive educational landscape for future generations.

The committee comprises of ten members who have served in various roles as leaders, stewards, managers, or advisers a diverse range of settings across the education sector over many decades. These individuals remain active in the education sector.

Learn more about the BDO Centre for Education.