AI and school
AI homework in Canada: the guidance gap, and what parents can do
What the surveys show, where the line between help and cheating sits, and a plan for home.
Correction, October 30, 2026 We corrected two surveys. KPMG’s student surveys are of students 18 and over, most in college or university, not school-age students. In the Fraser Institute’s survey, 42.3% of teachers said their school had a policy on students’ AI use: the 34.8% we gave was the share for staff. We also brought in our guide to whether AI homework help is cheating.
Contents
If you’ve watched your child finish a “tough” assignment in four minutes and felt a small twist of suspicion, you’re not alone. AI has arrived in homework faster than schools planned for, and many teachers are working without rules or training for it. Here’s what the surveys show, where the line between help and cheating sits, and what you can do about it tonight.
The guidance gap, by the numbers
The guidance gap is the distance between how many students use AI and how much guidance they get for it. The best Canadian numbers on use come from older students. KPMG surveys Canadians 18 and over at university, college, vocational school and high school, most of them in college or university.
- 202352%
- 202459%
- 202573%
- 202675%
Younger students are less studied. In a small 2025 study of 156 Grade 9 to 12 students in the Toronto area, mentored at the University of Toronto, 55% used AI for school more than once a week, and 21% rarely or never.
Now the other side. The Fraser Institute asked 756 Grade 6 to 12 teachers across Canada, between November 2025 and January 2026, what their schools had given them.
- No training on spotting when students use AI64.7%
- No training on teaching students to use AI appropriately63.6%
- No school policy on AI at all35.4%
Only 42.3% said their school had a policy on students’ AI use. Students have taken up AI faster than schools have prepared teachers for it. That’s the gap.
Why parents are right to pay attention
The worry isn’t that AI exists. It’s the copy-paste crutch: a student pastes the question in, pastes the answer out, and never does the thinking the assignment was meant to build. Students feel it themselves. In KPMG’s surveys of students 18 and over, about half say their critical thinking has gotten worse since they started using AI: 48% in 2025, 51% in 2026. In 2025, 66% said they weren’t learning or retaining as much, and 57% said they feel like they’re cheating when they use it.
Sit with that last one. More than half already sense they’re crossing a line; they just haven’t been given a clear one. That’s a guidance problem, and guidance is something parents can give at home even when the school hasn’t.
AI as a crutch
Paste the question, copy the answer, hand it in. The grade might be fine, but the learning didn’t happen, and it shows on tests, where there’s no chatbot.
AI as a tutor
Do the work first, then use AI to explain a stuck point, check the reasoning or make a practice question. The student still does the thinking.
Is it cheating?
It depends on how it’s used. Cheating is handing in work as your own when you didn’t do the thinking behind it. AI didn’t change that definition, only the tools. Asking AI to explain how to factor a quadratic is no different from asking a teacher. Copying its finished essay or answers and handing them in is.
| Learning with AI | Handing in AI’s work |
|---|---|
| “Explain how to solve this type of equation.” | “Solve question 4 so I can copy it.” |
| “Give me a similar practice problem.” | “Write my essay on this novel.” |
| “Check my answer and tell me where I went wrong.” | “Do my whole worksheet.” |
| “Quiz me on the causes of Confederation.” | “Answer my take-home test.” |
The test is simple: did your child do the thinking, or did the software? Students and teachers don’t always draw the line in the same place, though. In KPMG’s 2026 survey of people 18 and over who study or work at Canadian schools, colleges and universities, 72% of educators said using generative AI to help with schoolwork is cheating, against 50% of students. So the rule that counts is your child’s teacher’s.
What schools are (and aren’t) doing
Right now, guidance is a patchwork. Policy researchers note that “few provincial governments and school boards have proactively set policies or guidance for responsible AI use” (Tech Policy Press (opens in a new tab)), so the rules can change from one school to the next, even one teacher to the next. A January 2026 analysis in Policy Options (opens in a new tab) describes the same “policy patchwork” in colleges and universities, with guidance that changes “not just from province to province, but from course to course”.
That’s starting to change at the national level. Canada’s AI for All strategy funds a National AI Literacy Initiative, which launched in September 2026 and expects to reach more than 50,000 K-12 educators, and $30 million for digital skills programs from kindergarten to Grade 12. It will take time to reach every classroom, and this is a this-school-year problem for most families. It isn’t only Canadian, either: in Deloitte’s 2026 back-to-school survey of 1,207 US parents of K-12 students, 28% said their child used generative AI for schoolwork, and 33% said the school had guidelines for it.
A simple plan for parents
You don’t need to be a technologist to close this gap at home. You need a few clear rules and a little follow-through.
- Ask the school what the rule is. A one-line email to the teacher, “What’s your policy on using AI for homework?”, tells you whether to allow it at all, and keeps your house rules in line with the classroom.
- Set one household rule: AI explains, your child answers. It’s fine for explaining a concept or checking work, not for writing the answer they hand in.
- Do the work first, check with AI second. The order matters. If your child tries it first and then uses AI to check or explain, the thinking still happens. If AI goes first, it usually doesn’t.
- Use the “explain it back” test. If your child used AI on something, ask them to explain the answer in their own words. If they can’t, the learning got skipped. No lecture needed, just “let’s go through it together.”
- Watch for over-reliance. If AI comes out for every question, mix in practice without it.
- Pick a tool built to teach. A general chatbot will hand over a finished answer when asked. A tutor built for students doesn’t, and the best let a parent decide whether that can be switched off.
The difference the right tool makes
This is the part we think about every day, because it’s what we build. The problem with a general chatbot isn’t that it’s AI; it’s that its default is to answer. Ask it a homework question and it produces the finished product, which is the crutch you’re trying to avoid.
MapleMind is built the other way. Its guided mode, on from the start, teaches the idea and works a similar example instead of answering the assigned question, so your child still applies it themselves. A student on their own account can turn it off in Settings. On an account a parent holds, only the parent can turn it off, or let the student choose. It follows your province’s curriculum for Grades 1 to 12, so the help matches what’s taught in class, and it’s free, with 4 activities and 30 tutor messages a day. The point isn’t to keep AI away from kids. It’s to make sure the version they use is the one that teaches.
Sources
- KPMG in Canada, Majority of students use AI, but educators sound alarm (opens in a new tab), September 2026. Checked October 30, 2026.
- KPMG in Canada, Generative AI boom among Canadian students raises dilemmas (opens in a new tab), October 2025. Checked October 30, 2026.
- Fraser Institute (Paige MacPherson), Survey of Canadian Grades 6-12 Teachers on AI Training and School Policies for Its Use (opens in a new tab), June 23, 2026. Checked October 30, 2026.
- LinkedKey Foundation and the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information, “Teens Trust AI More Than They Should”: A Study of Canadian High School Students’ AI Risk Perception (opens in a new tab), December 5, 2025. Checked October 30, 2026.
- Tech Policy Press (André Côté and Nancy Naylor), Canada’s AI strategy must address the technology’s use in K-12 education (opens in a new tab), May 14, 2026. Checked October 30, 2026.
- Policy Options (Mostafa Khosravi Farsani), AI in the classroom is here. A policy patchwork is failing Canadian students (opens in a new tab), January 9, 2026. Checked October 30, 2026.
- Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Government of Canada launches National AI Literacy Initiative (opens in a new tab), September 9, 2026. Checked October 30, 2026.
- Digital Trends (on Deloitte’s 2026 Back-to-School Survey), Parents worry AI is becoming a crutch for their kids while schools struggle to keep up, survey finds (opens in a new tab), July 9, 2026. Checked October 30, 2026.
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