MOE is building AI into the national learning platform with guardrails, and asking students to learn about, with and beyond AI.
By Marcus Toh · 2026-07-12
MOE frames its approach as four things at once: students learn about AI, learn to use AI, learn with AI and learn beyond AI. The stated principle is that the approach puts students in the centre and pedagogy at the fore, with responsible use appropriate to a child's age and stage.
The tools sit inside the Singapore Student Learning Space (SLS), the national online platform for teaching and learning. MOE says these AI features come with in built safety and educational guardrails, and are designed to minimise cognitive offloading and over dependence on AI. Rollout of the wider EdTech Masterplan 2030 began progressively from 2024.
| Tool | Who it is for | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Adaptive Learning System (ALS) | Primary 5 to Secondary 2 Maths, Upper Secondary Geography | Creates a personalised learning path using machine learning, not generative AI |
| Learning Assistant (LEA) | Primary 4 and above, supervised for Primary 4 to 6 | Teacher activated chat help with guardrails such as a limited number of student interactions |
| AI literacy module | Students in general | A basic module on how AI works, its benefits, its risks, and how to use it well |
The Adaptive Learning System is the concrete one to know. MOE launched it in June 2023 for three topics at the Primary 5 level in Mathematics, and it has since been expanded to more topics and levels. It runs on machine learning, adjusting what a child sees next based on how they answer, rather than a chatbot writing answers for them.
You should let your kids use AI. I know that sounds odd coming from a tutor, but it is not something to keep them away from, it is something they will use for the rest of their lives, so the real job is to teach them to use it well. In school that part is handled for them, the tools sit inside the SLS with guardrails built in and a Learning Assistant that is capped and teacher activated, so it is there to assist rather than to hand over the answer.
The moment they close the laptop at home though, those guardrails are gone. That does not mean the answer is to ban it, because a curious child will find it anyway, it means the guardrails at home have to come from you. Sit with them, agree on when AI is fair game and when it is off, and let them lean on it to understand a hard concept rather than to skip the thinking altogether.
So what I keep telling parents is simple. Let your child learn with AI, but never let them learn only through it, because they still need the muscle of working a problem out on their own long after the novelty wears off. AI should be the tool that assists them, it was never meant to run their learning, and it is certainly not meant to run their lives.