🔴 Must Know
Microsoft’s AI privacy rules become binding for schools on November 1. Negotiated with the American Federation of Teachers, Microsoft has committed that student and educator data from its AI tools won’t train its models, can’t be sold or used for advertising, and that companion-style features built for emotional dependency are barred outright, with third-party audits to enforce it. The commitment covers “all Microsoft school contracts” (US-negotiated, global reach). OpenAI and Anthropic are reportedly discussing similar terms; Google, the dominant K-12 vendor, has made no equivalent commitment. Worth a line in your next vendor review.
The UAE has mandated a national AI curriculum for every school, public and private. Rolling out this term, it’s age-banded: under-13s get a screen-free “unplugged” AI-literacy programme of storytelling and games, with supervised tool access introduced around age 13, backed by training for 22,000 educators. Because the mandate covers private schools — which in the UAE means most international schools — this is now a compliance requirement for Gulf-region leaders, not an enrichment option. It’s also one of the clearer examples yet of a government pairing “more AI” with “no more screen time,” a framing many boards elsewhere are still reaching for.
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