There is no shortage of frameworks for artificial intelligence and education. One recent discussion suggested that there are now more than 115 AI literacy frameworks. The figure is striking, but the problem is not simply that there are too many documents. The deeper problem is that teachers, school leaders and policymakers can be left wondering which framework to use, what each one is for and how they fit together.

The AI Ready project has chosen a different approach. Rather than creating another free-standing framework, we are bringing three established European and international perspectives together. Each answers a different question.

The Council of Europe helps us ask what AI literacy is for. UNESCO helps us define what teachers need to know and be able to do. The European Union helps us connect this learning to classroom practice, learner outcomes and the emerging regulatory environment.

Our aim is not to simplify AI education by pretending that one framework can do everything. It is to make the existing landscape usable.

Why another framework is probably not the answer

The proliferation of frameworks reflects genuine interest in AI literacy. Governments, international organisations, universities, technology companies and professional bodies are all trying to respond to the rapid development of AI. They are also addressing different audiences. A framework for school leaders will not look like a framework for software developers. A framework for students will not have the same purpose as one for teachers.

The danger comes when these frameworks are treated as competing checklists. Schools may be encouraged to select one, complete an audit and declare themselves AI ready. Teachers may be offered training that focuses on the latest tools while ignoring questions about judgement, rights and educational purpose. Students may learn how to generate content without learning how AI systems shape information, opportunities and public debate.

AI readiness is not just a technical condition. It includes the ability to understand AI, question it, use it when appropriate, refuse it when necessary and participate in decisions about how it should be used. That requires more than another list of competences. It requires a coherent relationship between values, professional learning, classroom practice and school policy.

The first framework: the Council of Europe and the civic purpose of AI literacy

The Council of Europe provides the starting point because it asks why teachers and learners need AI literacy in the first place.

Its approach places AI within a wider framework of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. This means that AI literacy is connected to dignity, autonomy, equality, privacy, culture, human relationships, public discourse and access to redress. These are not abstract concerns for a future society. They already affect the daily work of schools.

A teacher needs to recognise when an AI system is influencing what information a learner sees, how a learner is assessed or which opportunities are offered. A student needs to be able to question an apparently confident answer, understand when personal data are being collected and decide whether using AI supports or weakens their own learning. Both need to know that they have a right to challenge decisions and seek help when an automated system causes harm.

The Council of Europe’s contribution is therefore about agency and civic responsibility. It prevents AI literacy from becoming a narrow course in tool use. Schools are not simply preparing consumers for a new technology market. They are preparing young people to live and participate in societies in which AI will influence work, communication, culture and democratic life.

This perspective is particularly important because AI systems are often presented as inevitable. A human-rights approach asks a different question: what should be protected, who should have a voice and what choices should remain open to people and institutions?

The second framework: UNESCO and the development of teachers

The Council of Europe helps us define the purpose of AI literacy, but it does not provide a detailed progression for teacher learning. For this, AI Ready draws on UNESCO’s AI Competency Framework for Teachers.

The UNESCO framework identifies fifteen competences across five areas: a human-centred mindset, ethics of AI, AI foundations and applications, AI pedagogy, and AI for professional learning. It also describes three stages of development: Acquire, Deepen and Create.

This progression matters. Not every teacher needs to begin at the same point, and professional development should not assume that all teachers have identical interests, experience or responsibilities. A teacher may first need to acquire a basic understanding of how generative AI works and where it is unreliable. They may then deepen their understanding by examining how AI affects assessment, inclusion or subject learning. At a later stage, they may create new learning activities, lead professional discussions or contribute to school policy.

UNESCO also makes an important distinction between using AI in education and preparing teachers to teach in an AI-shaped world. Teachers need practical experience with tools, but they also need the confidence to decide when not to use them. They need to understand privacy, bias, transparency and human agency. They need to be able to design learning in which AI supports rather than replaces thinking, creativity and relationships.

This is why the AI Ready course will not be a collection of software demonstrations. Tools change quickly. Professional judgement, ethical awareness and pedagogical knowledge have a longer life.

The third framework: the European Union and the connection to practice

The third element is the European Union’s policy and competence framework. This includes the EU’s ethical guidance for educators, the emerging AILit Framework for learners, the wider DigCompEdu tradition and the requirements created by the AI Act.

This European layer helps translate values and competences into questions that schools can ask in practice. Is there a clear educational purpose for using an AI system? Is human oversight meaningful? Are learners treated fairly? Are their data protected? Is the system technically reliable? Does it support learning, or does it simply automate an existing task without improving it?

The EU AI Act makes this practical work increasingly important. AI literacy measures are expected to take account of the knowledge, roles and context of the people using or affected by a system. Some uses of AI in education, such as systems involved in access, assessment or the evaluation of learning outcomes, may be treated as high risk. Emotion-recognition systems in education are prohibited except in narrow circumstances. Schools therefore need both professional understanding and institutional procedures.

The EU framework also keeps learners in view. The AILit Framework describes competences through four broad domains: engaging with AI, creating with AI, managing AI and shaping AI. This suggests that students should not be taught only how to prompt a system. They should learn how to evaluate it, work with it responsibly, understand its effects and contribute to decisions about its use.

The EU contribution is therefore the bridge between principle and implementation. It helps schools connect teacher learning with curriculum design, assessment, school policy and legal responsibilities.

How the three frameworks fit together

The strength of this approach lies in the relationship between the frameworks.

The Council of Europe asks: What kind of society and education do we want in an AI-shaped world?

UNESCO asks: What do teachers need to know and be able to do to support that goal?

The European Union asks: How can these principles and competences be applied in schools, classrooms and educational systems?

No single framework needs to carry the entire burden. Together, they provide a structure that is principled without being abstract, practical without being narrowly technical and connected to policy without reducing education to compliance.

This also explains why AI Ready is not proposing to add another comprehensive framework to the growing collection. We are developing a way of working with existing frameworks, showing how they can inform one another and how they can be used by real schools with limited time and resources.

From frameworks to an eight-module course

The main practical outcome for teachers will be an eight-module professional development course. The course will be developed with partners in Belgium, Greece and Spain, tested with teachers in the three countries and made available in English and the partner languages.

The eight modules will explore eight thematic areas. They will combine foundational knowledge about AI with ethical questions, classroom applications, critical evaluation and professional practice. The course will not treat the eight areas as eight isolated checklists. Each module will connect the three frameworks and relate them to situations teachers and school leaders actually face.

Participants will be encouraged to move from understanding to application and, where appropriate, to creating new practices. They will work with examples, scenarios and educational problems rather than learning about AI only in the abstract. An accompanying catalogue of tools and resources will help teachers connect the course to their own subjects and contexts.

The project will also develop an integrated pedagogical framework across subjects. This is important because AI education should not be confined to computer science. Questions about evidence, authorship, creativity, bias, privacy and decision-making belong in language education, science, social studies, vocational learning and the wider curriculum.

The course will be released as an Open Educational Resource. This means that it is intended to be shared, reused and adapted by schools and teacher educators beyond the original project partnership. Its value will not be measured by how many pages it contains, but by whether teachers can use it to make better decisions about AI in their own educational settings.

AI readiness as a continuing process

AI Ready does not assume that schools will become “ready” once they have completed a course or adopted a policy. AI systems will continue to change, and schools will need to review their practices. The project therefore links teacher development with school-level reflection, including work with the SELFIE tool, AI policy guidance and action planning.

The purpose is to create a shared language. School leaders should be able to discuss AI with teachers. Teachers should be able to discuss it with students. Students should be able to question the systems that affect their learning and their lives.

In a field crowded with frameworks, the most useful contribution may not be another grand model. It may be a practical way of connecting the best existing work. By combining the Council of Europe’s civic purpose, UNESCO’s teacher competences and the European Union’s practical and regulatory guidance, AI Ready aims to help schools move from confusion to informed action.

References

Attwell, G. (2026, April 23). How many AI literacy frameworks do we need? AI Pioneers. https://aipioneers.org/how-many-ai-literacy-frameworks-do-we-need/

Council of Europe. (n.d.). Artificial intelligence and education. Retrieved September 29, 2026, from https://www.coe.int/en/web/education/artificial-intelligence

European Commission. (2022). Ethical guidelines on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and data in teaching and learning for educators. https://education.ec.europa.eu/focus-topics/digital-education/actions/plan/ethical-guidelines-for-educators-on-using-artificial-intelligence

European Commission. (n.d.). SELFIE: A tool to support digital technology use in schools. Retrieved September 29, 2026, from https://education.ec.europa.eu/selfie

European Commission, & Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2026). AILit framework: AI literacy for learners. https://ailiteracyframework.org/

European Union. (2024). Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act). EUR-Lex. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:02024R1689-20260727

UNESCO. (2024). AI competency framework for teachers. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/ai-competency-framework-teachers

AI Ready consortium. (2025). Empower schools, teachers, and students to be AI ready [Unpublished Erasmus+ KA220-SCH project proposal].

The AI Ready project is funded by Erasmus+. This article describes the project’s approach and does not represent an official interpretation of any framework.

About the Image

In order to consolidate their power and funding, elites, tech companies and organisations promote technological hype and the discourse of inevitability. Although this process is often presented as a natural phase of innovation, it is actually an intentional instrument of techno-authoritarianism which exaggerates the positive effects of technology while downplaying the negative ones. Through socio-financial speculation, accelerationism, and socio-technical fictions such as AGI, they evade democratic oversight and social regulations, transposing the socio-Darwinian mechanism of economic survival into the social, political, and cultural spheres.