Consultation Outcomes: Health, Well-Being and Governance in AI and EdTech in Education

Educational technologies and AI are now embedded in the everyday infrastructure of schooling. What began as a rapid response during the COVID-19 pandemic has evolved into a lasting transformation of how education is delivered, experienced, and governed.

Our latest EDDS Institute report brings together insights from a pan-European, multi-stakeholder consultation that was held in late November, 2025, involving educators, health professionals, policymakers, researchers, and civil society. The findings point to a growing misalignment: the pace of technological adoption in education is accelerating faster than our ability to evaluate its impact on children’s health, development, and well-being.

Across the consultation, eight interrelated challenges emerged. These include:

• the absence of a whole-child health framework in edtech governance

• the rapid deployment of tools ahead of evidence of safety or benefit

• cumulative screen exposure

• structural pressures on schools, market-driven procurement

• AI-mediated relational risks

• fragmented regulation, and limited participation from key stakeholders.

A central message cuts across all of these: children’s digital exposure is no longer occasional or optional - it is continuous, layered, and institutionally structured. Yet governance systems still assess technologies in isolation, instead of as part of a broader developmental environment.

The report calls for a shift in how policymakers, education systems, and stakeholders approach edtech and AI in education. It proposes six guiding principles, including precaution before deployment, whole-child evaluation frameworks, accountability for cumulative exposure, developmental sensitivity, participatory governance, and public-interest-led procurement.

This is not a call to remove technology from education. Rather, it is a call to ensure that decisions about technology are grounded in evidence, aligned with children’s developmental needs, and guided by clear public-interest frameworks.

As discussions continue across Europe and beyond, it is clear that this conversation is only beginning. The challenge ahead is not whether technology will shape education - but how we ensure it does so in ways that genuinely support children’s health, learning, and long-term development.

Read the full report here.