At secondary schools, 20 percent of teachers now have tasks and exams co-checked by AI. 7 percent say they have already assigned a grade via AI without verifying the result. The figures come from a representative telephone survey by the digital association Bitkom of 501 teachers at lower and upper secondary levels, conducted between the end of May and the end of June 2026.
What else does the Bitkom survey show?
Overall, 58 percent of respondents use AI for school purposes. Half would like applications that take over routine work. At the same time, 51 percent feel overwhelmed by the technology, and only 57 percent report clear rules for the use of AI at their school.
AI in the Teachers' Lounge in Numbers
Telephone survey by Bitkom of 501 teachers at lower and upper secondary levels, end of May to end of June 2026
- 58 %use AI for school purposes
- 20 %have tasks and exams co-checked by AI
- 7 %have already graded via AI without verification
- 51 %feel overwhelmed by AI
Self-reported by respondents
Source: Bitkom
70 percent of teachers consider their students' use of AI hardly controllable. 12 percent deliberately allow AI even in exams. 92 percent support a requirement to label AI assistance on school assignments.
May an AI assign grades?
No, according to the will of the federal states, the final assessment remains reserved for the examiners. On 10 October 2024, the Conference of Education Ministers adopted a recommendation for action on the use of AI in schools. It states that performance assessment is a pedagogical and sovereign task that only teachers can fulfill. In addition, the education ministers derive from Article 22 of the General Data Protection Regulation that for decisions with legal effect, a human must always have the last word.
The paper explicitly envisions AI as an aid: for preliminary correction, as a correction assistant, and for faster, more precise feedback to learners. The recommendation names data protection, lack of traceability, and the risk of discrimination as risks. The federal states are to issue binding rules for its use as a decision-making aid. An AI grade adopted without verification is incompatible with any of these requirements.
What this means for you
If you use AI when grading, it is best to treat every assessment by the model as a draft. Read the work yourself and check the justification before you determine the grade.
Class tests contain personal data of your students. Before you copy texts into a private chatbot account, it is best to ask via the school portal or the school management which tool your state has approved. Several states rely on telli, an AI chatbot that the media institute FWU developed on behalf of all 16 states; Thuringia introduced it in April 2026. Login is via the VIDIS service, and the language models run on servers in the EU. The FWU guarantees that inputs neither go to third parties nor feed into training.
For your classes, it is worth setting a firm agreement on when AI is allowed and how students label their AI assistance. According to a study, young people anyway want dealing with AI to become a fixed part of lessons.
What AI actually is and how ChatGPT works is explained by the ChatGPT Masterclass on TutKit right in the first lessons.
Bitkom published the survey on 27 October 2026.
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