The first year of the AI Leap education program brought artificial intelligence to almost every upper secondary school in Estonia: 94% of teachers participating in the program used AI in their work, and 63% have redesigned their teaching as a result.
During the school year now coming to a close, 154 of Estonia’s 156 upper secondary schools took part in the AI Leap education program, involving approximately 5,000 teachers and 20,000 students in grades 10 and 11. As early as August 2025, teachers gained access to the paid version of ChatGPT or Gemini, and in January, students were given access to ITI, a learning-supportive app developed in collaboration with Estonian researchers and OpenAI.
“Education must keep pace with society’s needs and with what we know about how people truly acquire knowledge and skills. The technological shift has given us both the need and the opportunity to rethink what we teach, why we teach it, and how,” President Alar Karis said.
“AI Leap’s first year has also shown us that Estonian teachers and students are able to engage with new technology wisely, critically, and creatively. Having discussed AI extensively elsewhere in the world as well, I can confirm that Estonia’s approach to AI in education stands out for how carefully considered and learning-centered it is,” added President Karis.
In the school year beginning this fall, the education program will be expanded to the entire upper secondary level. Preparations are also currently underway at the Ministry of Education and Research to determine whether the program should be extended to vocational schools and basic school teachers.
“In vocational education, we must take into account the specific needs of different fields and learning arrangements, and basic school teachers must be supported in acquiring AI skills,” said Minister of Education and Research Kristina Kallas. “At the same time, AI must not replace the teacher or learning, it must be a tool in the service of better education,” added Kallas.
According to Kallas, the goal of the program’s first year was to help schools begin using AI systematically. “Schools’ readiness varied widely: some were already ahead of us, while others were just getting started. Our goal is not for students to use AI as much as possible, but for schools to know how to apply AI’s possibilities in ways that support learning and to set boundaries where it begins to replace students’ own thinking,” Kallas said.
For AI Leap CEO Ivo Visak, one of the clearest signs of the program’s first-year impact was the support it provided for collaborative learning among teachers. In approximately two-thirds of schools, Professional Learning Communities or other forms of collaboration began operating, where teachers discussed the use of AI, shared good practices, and agreed on how to use these solutions in teaching and learning. “The most important change over the year was that schools began discussing much more widely the purpose of homework, feedback, and assessment,” Visak added.
The Vast Majority of Teachers Use AI
A survey conducted at the end of the first school year showed that 94% of teachers participating in the AI Leap program used AI in their work, and 63% of teachers have redesigned their teaching as a result. Most often, teachers use AI to create learning materials and assignments at different levels of difficulty, prepare lessons, give feedback, and reduce administrative workload.
Two-thirds of teachers have assigned students tasks in which the use of AI is permitted or required. Teachers estimate that this saves them, on average, approximately two hours per week.
Learning App ITI Does Not Do the Work for Students
As part of the education program, a tutor-style learning app called ITI was created for Estonian students. Rather than immediately providing a finished answer, it guides learners toward the solution themselves through questions and explanations. By the end of the school year, more than 12,000 students had used the app, with approximately 4,000 using it actively each week. During the first year, students completed a total of about 10,000 learning sessions per week in ITI.
Students use the learning app to work through learning content, solve assignments step by step, ask for explanations and feedback, receive language support, program, and plan their learning.
“Feedback on the learning app has been both encouraging and critical: students have said that ITI can be annoying because it asks a lot of questions and does not immediately give them the answer,” Visak said. “But that is exactly the point of a learning-supportive app: to keep the thinking in the student’s hands, not hand that task over to AI. We are currently collecting information about users’ experiences with the learning app, which will help us continue developing it,” Visak continued.
The Impact Is Being Studied Scientifically
The impact of AI on Estonian students’ learning is being studied by the University of Tartu in cooperation with Stanford University and OpenAI. The study involves approximately 100 Estonian upper secondary schools and more than 9,000 students. To assess AI Leap’s impact, two student surveys were conducted, in March and May, to understand, among other things, whether students’ understanding of learning improved and their AI literacy increased during the implementation of the program.
“Research on this scale is unique in the world, and other countries have shown strong interest in Estonia’s experience,” said study lead Jaan Aru, Associate Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Tartu. “We are grateful to all the schools and students who took part in the study. This summer, we will begin analyzing the data, which will help us better understand the impact of AI Leap on learning and on students’ AI literacy,” Aru said.
At the beginning of June, the Institute of the Estonian Language completed a benchmark for language models that makes it possible to compare how well different AI models handle the Estonian language and cultural context. The results will help the AI Leap Foundation, together with technology partners, make development decisions so that the AI applications used by both students and teachers are more accurate, easier to understand, and better aligned with the needs of Estonian schools.
AI Leap is Europe’s first national education program, initiated by President Alar Karis and the Ministry of Education and Research, with the goal of supporting schools in the meaningful use of AI and helping teachers and students develop AI literacy. The program is being implemented through cooperation between the public and private sectors.