Alberta Board vs School-Level AI Policy – The Gaps Are Real
Ran an informal survey across my math department this term and the results were fascinating, if concerning.
Asked teachers in our school: what does your AI policy allow, and how do you personally handle AI-assisted work?
The two answers were different in 6 out of 9 cases.
Our board policy: vague statement about “academic integrity” that predates generative AI and hasn’t been updated.
Actual practice: every teacher is making up their own rules. One teacher bans all AI. One allows it with disclosure. One doesn’t think about it. One uses GPTZero for everything. One doesn’t know GPTZero exists.
the policy vacuum at the board level means school leadership fills it informally, and then teachers fill in what school leadership missed. The result is students in the same school getting radically different rules depending on which classroom they’re in.
Fascinating from a data perspective, terrible from a fairness perspective.
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same pattern in Quebec at the school level despite having a CEGEP policy framework. policy exists but implementation is almost entirely teacher-discretion. A student in one section of a course has different AI rules than a student in the adjacent section. This is not equitable.
this. underrated point. the student equity issue isn't just ESL false positives - it's the baseline inconsistency of what the rules even are depending on which teacher you have.
tracking this across provinces for a project. Alberta has the most explicit board-level variation I've documented - two boards 90 km apart with completely opposing approaches, neither of which is technically out of compliance with provincial guidance because the guidance is deliberately vague enough to allow both.
vague provincial guidance is a feature, not a bug. lets boards claim compliance without actually specifying anything.
BC has the same board-to-school gap. our board put out a guidance document last spring that said essentially "follow your school's existing AUP." our school's AUP is from 2019 and doesn't mention AI. so we're on our own.