On 12 May 2025 the basic education teaching guidance committee of the Ministry of Education issued the 2025 AI literacy guide for primary and secondary schools and a separate 2025 guide on students’ use of generative artificial intelligence. The two documents move AI education from whether to teach it to how, stage by stage, it should be taught and used.
The literacy guide: competence, not tools
The literacy guide centres on developing competence, building tiered objectives from primary through senior secondary school. What it emphasises is not fluency with a particular product, but understanding the capability boundaries, data sources and ethical implications of artificial intelligence.
That orientation determines how schools should procure and select tools: the question is whether a tool helps form judgement, not merely whether its features are complete.
The use guide: breaking “may we” into stage rules
The value of the generative AI use guide is that it breaks a blanket prohibition or permission into executable stage rules. In the lower stages, teacher-led use, with tools not placed directly before students, is preferable; in the upper stages, use under teacher guidance for inquiry tasks is permitted, provided the parts in which AI participated are clearly marked.
This connects directly to labelling requirements. See our note on the Measures for Labelling AI-Generated Synthetic Content.
Working alongside teacher capability building
The two guides dovetail with teacher development work advanced at the same time: for rules to take effect, teachers must know where use is possible and where a human must remain responsible. See our note on the action plan for digitally empowering teacher development.
Where schools and education providers can start
First, translate stage rules into school-level detail, setting the boundaries of use in the classroom, homework and assessment.
Second, map the processing flow for student data, particularly entrusted processing and outbound transfer arrangements for third-party AI education products. See our note on obligations of major personal information processors.
Third, build labelling and review for AI-generated content, so that unlabelled generated content does not enter teaching or assessment. See our notes on the guidance on minors’ online protection and on the AI education ethics reference framework.
Education is subject to three sets of rules at once: content regulation, personal information protection and the protection of minors. The guides matter because they translate those rules into actions teachers and students can carry out.
This article is based on the Ministry of Education basic education teaching guidance committee’s 2025 AI Literacy Guide for Primary and Secondary Schools and 2025 Guide on Students’ Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence and public information and is for reference only; it does not constitute legal advice.