Oxford Rubric™
Assessing Artificial Intelligence Usage in Schools
About the Oxford Rubric
Artifical Intelligence Assessment Framework for Schools
The rapid emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in educational contexts presents both significant opportunities and material risks for schools. While AI has the potential to enhance teaching, personalise learning and reduce administrative burden, its uncritical or poorly governed adoption may undermine safeguarding, pedagogical integrity, professional judgement and teacher/pupil agency.
We have created the Oxford Rubric as a principled, school‑ready framework for assessing whether usage of AI in various educational settings is appropriate, ethical and educationally sound. The rubric can be used to assess specific tools your school may be considering or it can be used to guide policy in broad scenarios.
The framework is not specific to any particular technology or software product, and it consists of five criteria that can be applied to tools, broader scenarios and general initiatives. The criteria are:
- Safety
- Efficacy
- Accountability
- Transparency
- Agency
The full rubric (including rationale, indicators, and more) is explained in our whitepaper. You can freely download the whitepaper below!
Download the WhitepaperNot just saying 'No'
But the Oxford Rubric is not just about saying 'no' to AI. The operationalised rubrics developed by our partners are something more encompassing than a binary decision. Digitised rubrics capture decision making and due diligence while allowing for selective usage in specific scenarios. This shows how schools are really thinking about AI in a rationale way.
Partners are also building 'AI maturity models' on the rubric to help guide schools as they drive forward in a safe way.
All this lays the foundations so that pedagogical innovation can be explored in a safe way
Our Partners
We are working with our trusted partners at 4i Studio (https://4i.studio) to operationalise the Oxford Rubric™ into a useful set of tools for school leaders, governors, and teachers.
Those leaders and teachers are often left overwhelmed by the vendor-led hype around AI in education, and may feel under pressure to adopt specific AI tools without fully understanding how they work or the implications of their usage. They may also feel underqualified to object in this very technical landscape, and consequently may deploy AI in their schools and classrooms despite having serious misgivings.
The operationalised tools at 4i Studio are 100% aligned with our published Oxford Rubric for assessing AI in schools. The tools work on our published principles and are easy to use, even for non-technical staff.
Critically, the output of the framework provides a solid assessment that can be used to present objections in a clear, unambiguous way. In other words, where AI technology or AI products have failed against specific criteria, non-technical staff can use those results to present their objections in a clear manner.