Background
Buckswood School Riyadh is a British international school for children from KG to Grade 6. It teaches through the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) and the British curriculum, and opened for the 2024/2025 academic year.
The school wanted its pupils to understand artificial intelligence, not only to meet it through apps. That meant designing an AI curriculum for primary-age children, a task few schools had attempted.
The challenge
Three problems had to be solved together.
- No model to follow. In 2024 no national AI curriculum existed for primary pupils, and the IB framework had little AI content to build on.
- Very young learners. Children from 4 to 11 cannot be taught AI the way adults are. Each year group needed ideas it could handle, in the right order.
- Teachers and rules. Staff needed confidence and a safe way to use AI tools, and the school needed to be ready for Ministry inspection.
The solution
The curriculum was designed from scratch by Vanina Ciacciarelli, then AI Mentor at the school, who also mentored the teachers who deliver it.
A year-by-year progression
Pupils learn AI and digital literacy by making things, testing them and fixing mistakes. Each year builds on the one before: clear instructions and first stories in the early years, then interactive games, then training and testing machine learning models, and finally writing text-based code. The full year-by-year map is shared with schools during the diagnostic.
An AI Club runs for pupils from KG to Grade 2.
Taught about AI, not only with AI
In Year 4, pupils see that a model can be wrong at first. They add more examples and test again. That is how they learn that AI learns from data, and that its results should be questioned.
Anchored in recognised frameworks
The design draws on UNESCO's AI competency framework for students (2024). It describes four dimensions: a human-centred mindset, the ethics of AI, AI techniques and applications, and AI system design. It also follows three levels of progression: understand, apply and create. The lessons sit inside the school's IB PYP and British curriculum planning.
Teacher mentoring and a clear policy
Teachers were mentored to deliver the lessons with confidence, and the Board approved a school-wide AI use policy for staff.
Results
The curriculum has now run for three academic years.
- It started in 2024–25 and is still taught in 2026–27.
- It came before the national rollout. Saudi Arabia announced an AI curriculum for public schools in July 2025, and 50 new AI units for 2026–27 in August 2026.
- Staff work under a Board-approved AI use policy.
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| August 2024 | Buckswood School Riyadh opens for 2024/2025 with the IB and British curriculum |
| 2024–25 | AI literacy curriculum starts, KG to Grade 6 |
| July 2025 | Saudi Arabia announces an AI curriculum for public schools from 2025–26 |
| August 2026 | 50 new AI units announced for the 2026–27 national curriculum |
We learned how to think carefully. We learned how to test our ideas. We learned how to fix mistakes. We learned how to explain what we made.Buckswood pupils, June 2026
What this means for your school
The approach does not depend on the age of the pupils. Scolaize applies it in primary, secondary and vocational training, in four steps over 2 to 3 weeks, with a fixed scope:
- Diagnostic. We map what your school already teaches, so AI extends your curriculum instead of competing with it.
- Framework. An age-appropriate AI literacy framework built for your school, not a generic template.
- Roadmap. A 0 to 12 month plan: who teaches what, and in which term.
- Staff training. Recommendations so your teachers feel confident leading the lessons.
Spain's IA360 plan, presented in September 2026, also puts AI into secondary and vocational curricula. If it worked for primary pupils in Riyadh, it can be adapted to your classrooms. The work is led by Vanina Ciacciarelli, who designed the Buckswood curriculum.
Frequently asked questions
What is an AI literacy curriculum?
A sequenced set of lessons that teach students how AI works, how to question it and how to use it responsibly, matched to their age.
Can primary pupils really learn how AI works?
Yes. At Buckswood, Year 4 pupils train a model to recognise facial emotions from examples. They test it, see where it is wrong and add more data to improve it.
How does an AI curriculum fit the IB PYP?
It extends the framework the school already uses. Scolaize starts with a diagnostic of what the school teaches today, so AI concepts add to it instead of competing with it.
Can this approach work in secondary school and vocational training?
Yes. The content and tools change with the age group, and the approach adapts to each school.
Does a school need an AI use policy?
Staff use AI tools whether or not the school plans for it. A policy sets the approved tools and a way to request others, and protects student and staff data.