Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

What happened

On 19 June 2026, the Norwegian government imposed sweeping restrictions on the use of generative AI (including ChatGPT-style assistants) at the elementary school level — effectively a near-ban for younger pupils.

Context and impact

Norway joins the strictest European jurisdictions on AI in classrooms, contrasting with more liberal approaches such as Estonia's national ChatGPT rollout. Drivers: concerns about loss of foundational cognitive and literacy skills, dependency risk, and weak verifiability of outputs. For EdTech firms and AI assistant vendors it adds another regulatory layer after Italy/France penalties on children's data handling.

Details

• Targets primary school level
• Among the strictest AI-in-school policies in Europe
• Pressures vendors to build certified age-gated tooling