TL;DR

East Renfrewshire’s Mearns Castle High School has made Jamie Laycock its principal teacher of AI literacy, the BBC reported on Monday 5 October. It is believed no UK school had created such a post before. His brief is not to promote AI but to teach pupils to doubt it, check it and use it with care.

What the role covers

Many UK schools already have an AI lead, usually a teacher who picks up the responsibility on top of a normal timetable. Mearns Castle has instead given the subject a post of its own, filled by Laycock, who was previously a principal teacher of biology.

Every S1 and S2 pupil will get AI literacy lessons. Older year groups will meet the topic through citizenship and personal education classes, and senior pupils can take an elective. Laycock will also train colleagues and produce materials that other schools can use.

The syllabus is deliberately sceptical. One early lesson asked pupils to sort real photographs from AI-generated ones, which proved harder than most expected. Others cover chatbots inventing facts, the tendency to treat a fluent machine as a trusted friend, bias inherited from training data, and flattery. “It’s sycophantic,” Laycock said. “It always tells you you’re amazing, that your idea is great.”

Head teacher Stuart Clark said acting on AI “is not the same thing as advocating for it”, and that schools should avoid repeating the mistakes made when young people took up social media without understanding it.

Why now

According to the BBC, the post followed growing interest from parents and pupils, many of them worried about how AI will change the careers they are aiming for. A report from the University of Edinburgh earlier this year found Scottish schools had lacked the time and capacity to prepare. The Scottish Government issued national guidance on AI in education in March, and Màiri McAllan, the education secretary, said councils can use its principles to shape their own approach.

Looking forward

The appointment lands alongside fresh evidence from England, where an EEF trial of Oak National Academy’s Aila tool found AI can cut teachers’ planning time. That trial measured teacher workload; Laycock’s role is aimed at what pupils understand. In our view, Mearns Castle is testing whether AI literacy works better as a specialist’s job than as an add-on to someone else’s. If the materials Laycock produces are shared as planned, other schools will be able to judge that without creating a post of their own.