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Session 1. Who Decides About AI: Governance Structures
Objective. Lead a group in designing the governance of AI for one school or cluster: an AI committee with a short terms of reference, named roles with decision rights, and an approval process that sorts every request into a green, amber or red tier and ends in a register entry with a review date.
Most schools meet AI as a series of small surprises: an app a colleague installed, a free trial in the inbox, a gift from a parents' committee. Governance turns surprises into decisions that someone owns. This lesson goes beyond the key ideas and shows how to keep a committee small and useful, how to write roles that really limit and protect people, and how to run the approval flow so that teachers use it willingly and the register becomes a living record rather than a file nobody opens.
Key ideas
Governance means named decisions
- Governance is not a long document. It is the answer to three questions: who may say yes to an AI use, who must be asked first, and who answers if it goes wrong.
- Without it, AI arrives through the side door: a teacher installs an app, a parent donates a tool, a vendor offers a free trial. Each looks small; together they are a school-wide risk nobody owns.
- Course 14.6 (Strategic Use of AI) decided where AI helps. This course asks who governs it, under which rules, and how the school learns from mistakes.
A small committee that can meet
- Five to seven members is enough: the head or deputy head as chair, an AI lead, a data owner, the safeguarding lead, one or two teachers from different subjects. A big committee never meets.
- Add pupil and parent voices as advisers, not as decision makers on technical risk. Small schools can share one committee across a cluster and meet for 45 minutes once a term plus when a red request arrives.
- Write a one-page terms of reference: purpose, members, what it decides, what it only advises on, how often it meets, how it records decisions.
Roles and decision rights
- Give every role one sentence of duty and one sentence of limit. The head is accountable. The AI lead runs the process day to day. The data owner knows what pupil data exists. The safeguarding lead can stop any use that puts a child at risk.
- Separate who proposes from who approves: a teacher who wants a tool should not be the only person who judges its risk. Write the rule that the safeguarding lead's stop cannot be overruled by a single person.
- Name a deputy for each role. A process that stops when one person is ill is not governance.
An approval process with three tiers
- Every request goes on one page: what, who for, which problem, which data, who checks the output. The AI lead screens it within a set number of days, for example five school days, and assigns a tier.
- Green: no pupil data, teacher checks output (the AI lead can approve). Amber: pupils use it or limited data is involved (approve with written conditions). Red: decisions about people, personal data of children, cameras or biometrics, unknown vendor (committee advises, head decides).
- Every decision, including a no, goes into a register with a review date. What is not written down cannot be reviewed.
The approval flow
A committee that actually meets
Committees fail because they are too big, too vague or too slow. Fix the size at five to seven, put the meeting dates in the school calendar for the whole year, and make green requests the AI lead's job so that the committee sees only amber and red cases. A 45-minute termly meeting with a printed register and a one-page agenda is enough: new requests, decisions to review, incidents, feedback.
Write down what the committee does not do. It does not teach, does not buy tools alone and does not punish. Its power is to advise, to set conditions and to record. Tell staff this in one sentence, because a committee that is feared receives fewer honest requests and the school ends up with more hidden use.
Roles with a duty and a limit
For each role write one sentence of duty and one of limit. The AI lead screens and keeps the register but cannot approve a red request alone. The data owner says what pupil data exists and where, but does not decide pedagogy. The safeguarding lead may stop a use that puts a child at risk, and that stop can only be lifted by the committee, not by one person. The head is accountable for the final decision on red requests.
Name a deputy for every role. In a village school of 18 teachers, one person may hold two roles, but the person who proposes a tool should never be the only one who judges its risk. In a cluster, share one committee and rotate the chair each term so that no school feels ruled by another.
Examples from the classroom
The committee that met once
Scene. In a Samarkand school the head creates a committee of eleven. It meets twice, argues about tablets and then stops, because nobody can find a date when eleven people are free. In September, Malika, the deputy head, proposes seven members, termly dates fixed in the school calendar and a rule that green requests go to the AI lead. In the first term it meets three times and clears nine requests.
Insight. A small committee with fixed dates and delegated green decisions keeps governance alive.
The stop that nobody could lift
Scene. Dilnoza, the safeguarding lead in a Tashkent school, stops an app because pupils must upload photos. A deputy head overrules her by phone to please a vendor. Parents hear about it and trust drops. The committee later writes that a safeguarding stop can be lifted only by the committee after a written review, and the head signs the rule.
Insight. A protective power must be written so that one person cannot quietly cancel it.
The register that stayed empty
Scene. A Fergana school makes a register but fills it only after the head asks. Aziz, the AI lead, changes one thing: each approval email ends with a line, 'Entered in the register on this date', and the register is read aloud for five minutes at the termly staff meeting. Within a term, teachers start asking 'Is it in the register?' before they try a new tool.
Insight. A register works when it is visible and useful in daily routines, not only kept.
Common pitfalls
- Creating a committee of eleven or more people who cannot find a common date.
- Letting the person who proposes a tool also be the only judge of its risk.
- Writing roles as titles without any duty, limit or deputy.
- Keeping a register that nobody reads or reviews.
Design the Governance of AI
- Open the Activity Kit: a SAMPLE school (Zarafshon School, Samarkand region, 860 pupils, 54 teachers, Uzbek and Russian sectors) with six AI requests that arrived in one term (5 min).
- Pairs (10 min): fill the roles table for the sample school. For each role write who holds it, what it decides and who must be consulted. Name a deputy for each.
- Pairs (15 min): run each of the six requests through the approval flow. Give a tier, say who decides, and list any conditions. Write one sentence of reason.
- Whole group (10 min): compare tiers for requests 3 and 5. Where pairs differ, find which rule in the tier box is unclear and rewrite it.
- Part B, pairs (15 min): write the one-page terms of reference for the committee: purpose, members, decides, advises, meeting rhythm, how decisions are recorded. Keep it to eight lines.
- Offline fallback: everything is done on paper with the printed kit; no device or AI tool is needed. If a group wishes, one pair may ask a chatbot to draft the terms of reference and then must correct it against the sample school.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which request was hardest to tier, and which words in the tier box decided it?
- Who in your own school holds each role today, and which role is missing or held by one overloaded person?
- What would make teachers use the request form instead of avoiding it?
Reflect
- Which AI uses already happen in your school without anyone having approved them?
- Whom would teachers trust to say 'not yet' to a tool kindly and clearly?
- What is the smallest version of this process you could start next week?
Try it tomorrow
- Draw the approval flow on one sheet and ask three colleagues to explain it back to you in a minute.
- Write one sentence of duty and one of limit for each role, then ask each role holder to correct it.
- Read one real recent AI request aloud and tier it with a colleague in ten minutes.
Further reading and links
Governance is a small committee, named roles with limits, a one-page request and three tiers, and a register that every decision ends in.