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A strategic response to AI in WA schools

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In 2025, the Fogarty Foundation launched new initiatives and partnerships exploring the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on education, with a particular focus on K-12 education. As AI rapidly reshapes how knowledge is created and accessed, we recognise that building educator capability, and teaching skills such as AI literacy will ensure that WA’s response to AI in education is guided by equity, ethics, and evidence. 

While technology offers extraordinary new possibilities, it is strong, values‑driven leadership that will ensure no WA teacher or student is left behind, recognising that equity does not emerge automatically from technology.

How we approach this work

The Forum revealed that AI has become embedded in WA's K-12 education system whether schools permit it or not. Moving forward requires balancing the technology's realities with evidence-based practice, quality teaching, and student wellbeing. Key priorities emerged to guide the Fogarty Foundation's future AI education initiatives and partnerships.

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    Day of AI Australia

    This priority is underpinned by an evidence-based approach to AI in education, using AI to advance best practice teaching and strategies for driving school improvement. Specifically, we aim to build AI literacy skills among K-12 teachers, school leaders & pre-service teachers. This includes work with partners such as Day of AI Australia to deliver PD to educators across the state, tailored to WA’s curriculum and context. These initiatives will prioritise equity, ensuring that WA’s public schools are empowered with the knowledge, resources and support to respond to AI ethically and responsibly.

    The Fogarty Foundation is excited to partner with Day of AI Australia to bring meaningful AI education and teacher training to Western Australia. Together, we are working to ensure that students and educators across the state have access to AI literacy that is informed, contextually appropriate, and co-designed with WA schools to respond to their unique needs.

    This partnership will deliver a range of professional development opportunities for WA teachers including in-person and online PD delivery in regional and metropolitan areas. Professional development will be tailored to the needs of classroom teachers who are leveraging the benefits of new technologies as well as mitigating possible negative impacts on learning and student wellbeing, and of school leaders who are navigating an increasingly complex teaching and governance landscape.

    Day of AI Australia
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    AI Knowledge Exchange

    This priority recognises that the evidence-base for AI in education is in its infancy, and that there is a need to communicate knowledge about the impact of AI on K-12 education between key stakeholders, and translate learnings into practice and policy, at local, national and global levels. In 2026, we will host a Distinguished Visiting Researcher in collaboration with the Forrest Research Foundation to support this goal. This visit will bring together key stakeholders across the sector to inform WA's approach to AI in education, connecting WA leaders with global research and best practice.

    The residency will focus on building AI literacy in pre-service teachers, facilitating cross-sector collaboration, and translating global research into practical strategies for schools. Key activities during the week will include media engagement, roundtables with policymakers and sector leaders, workshops for teachers and pre-service teachers, and events for parents and school communities. The residency will culminate in a cross-institutional event for WA teaching students, building capability in AI pedagogy and connecting global research with local practice. Preparatory work, including a policy-focused think tank, will ensure the visit delivers meaningful outcomes.

    AI Knowledge Exchange
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    GenAI Youth Ambassadors

    This priority concentrates on creating opportunities for young people to build foundational AI literacy skills, to give them agency to shape decisions about how the technology is used, and use AI to develop enterprising ventures and responses to global challenges. We will be working with youth advocates and leaders in this domain, to centre youth voices and perspectives. We believe that it is critical that the generation who will be living and working in an AI enabled world have the opportunity to be instrumental in shaping this transition and the technology’s trajectory.

    GenAI Youth Ambassadors
Western Australia can lead Australia in equitable AI integration. My research across five countries showed success requires two things: clear government direction and empowered educators.

Chris Bush, Churchill Fellow & Educator

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In 2026, in collaboration with the Forrest Research Foundation, the Fogarty Foundation hosted the University of Oxford’s Dr Sara Ratner as our AI Distinguished Visiting Researcher for the AI Knowledge Exchange, a week-long program that brought together more than 500 sector leaders, teachers, school leaders, young people, researchers and policymakers to drive a strategic response to AI in education across Western Australia. Working directly alongside WA’s education community, Dr Ratner helped bridge global research with local practice through think tanks, roundtables, youth consultations and a hands-on training day for pre-service teachers, exploring how AI is affecting schools from the classroom right through to sector policy.

2026 AI Knowledge Exchange
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GenerationAI is an initiative of the Fogarty Foundation built on the premise that young people shouldn't just be asked what they think about AI in education, they should be in the room helping decide what happens next. It sits within the Foundation's broader work on AI in eductaion, building educator capability, growing an evidence base that is still in its infancy, and making sure WA's response is guided by equity, ethics and evidence. GenerationAI is the piece that puts youth voices at the centre, recognising that AI is already embedded in students' lives whether or not classrooms permit it, and that young people have both the most at stake and the least say in decisions being made about them.

GenAi Youth Ambassadors

Our Impact to Date

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Teachers provided with AI Literacy PD
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Schools involved
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Gen AI Youth Ambassadors

Navigating the Future of Knowledge

As artificial intelligence transforms how information is created, shared and accessed, what skills and values will matter most? How can educators, researchers, policymakers and communities embrace new technologies while retaining critical thinking and human agency? And how do we ensure that innovation strengthens, rather than diminishes, our capacity to learn, collaborate and make meaning together? In this Perth Dialogue, Dr Sara Ratner argues that the future will be shaped not by technology alone, but by our collective ability to respond thoughtfully, responsibly and with purpose.

The Perth Dialogue
The decisions we make now will determine whether AI deepens students’ knowledge and critical thinking, or instead hollows out the learning process and causes long-term harm to their cognitive development. AI’s propensity for error and hallucination makes it even more essential that students build deep knowledge and strong analytical skills. Teachers are a crucial part of the solution.

Professor Leslie Loble AM, Chair, The Australian Network for Quality Digital Education