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What a "living" AI policy for schools really looks like

Hi everyone,

In late 2023, I was commissioned by the Victorian ICT Network for Education to write a set of generative AI guidelines for schools. ChatGPT was not quite a year old. Schools were caught between panic and possibility, and my job was to produce something a fictional "VINE School" could work from: principles, practical advice, and a template that member schools could adapt to their own contexts.

Those first guidelines turned out to be genuinely useful; they were downloaded, reposted, and adapted across the sector in ways I never expected. But three years is a long time in AI, and last year VINE commissioned an update. I spent the first three months of 2026 on it, surveying member schools, interviewing ICT managers and digital learning leads, and running a participatory soft launch in Melbourne on 30 March. The official version went live last week.

The 2026 VINE GenAI Guidelines

The 2026 guidelines are a substantially different document from their 2023 predecessor. They are built around three pillars, seven guiding principles, and a set of practical tools schools can adopt on Monday morning: a deepfake incident response protocol, a risk-zoning model for AI tool use, a cognitive offloading discussion toolkit, and an AI-adjacent policy checklist, among others.

The blog post covers the update process and the five themes that emerged from consultation, including a widening gap between school policy and classroom reality, the shift from academic integrity to cognitive offloading, and a staff polarisation that has direct implications for professional learning.

I've also built a companion website where you can read the guidelines in a browseable format, jump to specific sections or tools, and download the full PDF. The whole document is published under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), so schools and systems are free to copy, adapt, and redistribute for non-commercial educational purposes.

Cheers,

Leon

PS: Today is the final day to lock in Early Bird pricing for the Term 2 Practical AI for Curriculum Leaders cohort. The T2 cohort is full (capped at 25 per term), but registering your interest for the waiting list today secures the Early Bird rate if a spot opens up. Details here: https://leonfurze.com/curric-leaders/​

Stay informed.​
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