Estonia is redesigning its education system so AI helps students think, not just gives them answers. The goal is to turn AI from a smart servant into a smart coach. To say that artificial intelligence is advancing fast is the understatement of the decade. By the time you’ve finished reading this article, parts of it will probably already be out of date, writes e-Estonia Blog.
The high-speed growth of generative AI tools (think ChatGPT and Gemini) is changing the educational landscape beyond recognition. Students are integrating these technologies into their studies faster than institutional policies, teachers, or parents can keep up with, let alone fully grasp. In 2025, Estonia became the first nation to introduce AI literacy into its national curriculum through a groundbreaking partnership with OpenAI and Google. The first-of-its-kind AI Leap initiative set out to help schools adapt to the age of AI and support meaningful learning.
We sat down with AI Leap CEO Ivo Visak to discuss how the initiative has been progressing and what it means for students, teachers, and—ultimately—humanity.
Smart coaches, not smart servants
Even before AI Leap came along, 64–90% of Estonian students were using commercially available AI tools in their schoolwork. Research shows that such rampant use of technologies not designed for the education system can hinder the healthy development of critical thinking, focus, creativity, and self-management.
“Generative AI can also further increase the educational gap, where very smart students get even further ahead,” Visak says. “At the same time, for those who may not have clear learning skills early on, delegating their learning to a machine would make the result even worse.”
Born from an urgent need to counteract these trends, AI Leap set out to rethink education in the age of AI, raise AI literacy across society, and advance education through research-based development.
Announced in early 2025, the ambitious initiative has by now grown beyond a lofty goal into a rapidly evolving, tangible reality. As of January 2026, according to Visak, AI Leap has already equipped more than a hundred Estonian upper-secondary schools (for scale, all of Estonia has a total of 154 upper secondary schools) with its dedicated learning app, which behaves very differently from the ChatGPTs and Geminis of the world.
“This learning app supports the growth mindset and planning skills,” Visak says. When a student, for example, asks the app to write an essay about Greek gods, instead of spitting out a perfectly polished (but bland) essay, the app starts by asking the student questions: Are you pressed for time right now? What is this essay for? The student inevitably has to start thinking about what they’re doing and why. This simple change in the dynamics of the conversation is crucial, as it shifts the focus from passively obtaining a response to triggering the learner to think.
The process, then, becomes a dialogue rather than a student feeding problems into an instant solution machine. The AI, crucially, becomes a smart coach rather than a smart servant.
“In the education system and in the context of brain development, we can’t have servants, we can only have coaches,” Visak says. “The brain doesn’t develop if we don’t train it.”
Early data show that students are responding well. “From mid-October to mid-December, we conducted a pilot for nine hundred high school students,” Visak says. “The students were more willing to use our application, precisely because, first of all, they felt and believed that it was more useful for them. Another thing that obviously suits students is that the data is not used for training. What we have also been able to do, during this cooperation with OpenAI, is that in our model, in the case of certain risk behaviours or in the case of identifying certain problematic patterns, it can actually recommend very relevant Estonian resources for help.”
The evolving role of the teacher
Perhaps the most obvious next question is, what about teachers? Where do they fit in this brave new world?
“The teacher is not going to disappear,” Visak says, emphasising that the role will continue to evolve. “The amount of existing information is making brutal leaps, growing all the time exponentially. The teacher’s role is increasingly both mediator and translator of the vast world of information. My message to teachers has been largely that, at the end of the day, I don’t care whether you use artificial intelligence or not. What I do care about is that you understand how artificial intelligence works, because you can be absolutely sure that at least three-quarters of your class is using it. And if you’re planning classes the same way you did in 2019, and if you continue this over the next few years, I suspect that the value of a teacher in such an education system would actually be relatively small.”
According to Visak, what is becoming increasingly important is for teachers to become strong supporters of social-emotional skills. “How can we actually ensure that these better practices for social-emotional skills reach Estonian teachers, so that over time, over the next decade, they actually become even better translators of information and even better developers of social-emotional skills,” Visak says. “Technology plays a role in all of this, but the biggest key is still in the hands of teachers, and the future of teacher education.”
Estonia as a trailblazer and testbed
Estonia’s reputation as an education innovator dates back to the country’s 1996 Tiger Leap initiative, which computerised its schools. Since then, Estonia’s students have become European leaders in PISA scores.
Today, as the first country to join OpenAI’s Education for Countries, Estonia is once again in a position to act as a trailblazer, testbed, and research partner for an initiative that will, without exaggeration, shape entire generations.
The significance and impact of cooperation at this level can’t be overstated, especially for a country whose people and expertise are one of its main exports, setting it apart globally. “We’re cooperating with these large companies not only at the level of the education system, but also at the scientific level. Estonian scientists today are at the very forefront of one of the world’s most sought-after technological discoveries,” Visak says of the scientific minds behind AI Leap, led by renowned neuroscientist Jaan Aru.
For Estonia to survive and thrive as a small nation, it’s crucial to preserve and build upon the country’s advantages, and AI will inevitably continue to play a central role in the process.
“It is very important for us to do everything in our power to ensure that our young Estonians remain very, very smart,” Visak says.