# Google Has Put AI in Your Classroom. Did You Agree to It?

Author: John Wright
Published: 2026-11-09
Updated: 2026-11-10
Source: https://schoolleadershiphq.com/articles/google-ai-overviews-in-the-classroom

> Google's AI Overviews mean pupils may be using generative AI even when their school hasn't decided to introduce it. A history lesson in our school showed why leaders might want to check which search tools children are really using.

Google's integration of AI into everyday Search means pupils may be using generative AI even when their school hasn't decided to introduce it. A recent classroom experience made me realise this is something school leaders might want to look at.

An interesting discussion arose in our staff meeting this week. One of our teachers had been planning a history lesson for upper Key Stage 2, looking at Neville Chamberlain's position in the lead-up to the Second World War and Winston Churchill's views on it.

The intention was for pupils to carry out their own research. They would use agreed search terms, visit different websites, read the information they found and extract the relevant details. They would also consider the reliability of their sources and compare the accounts they were reading.

The teacher had already identified some useful websites through her own preparatory research. However, when she revisited the activity, she discovered a problem.

Google was answering the questions for the pupils.

The AI-generated overview that now appears at the top of many Google searches was doing much of the work she actually wanted the children to do. Rather than visiting websites, reading through text, locating relevant details and making judgements about what they had found, pupils could simply be presented with a neatly summarised answer.

The technology was being helpful. Unfortunately, it was helping with precisely the things the children were supposed to be learning.

## When making things easier isn't helpful

I use AI regularly in my own work, and I find it enormously useful. One of its greatest strengths is acting as a personal assistant: gathering information, summarising material, drafting documents and completing tasks that would otherwise take up a considerable amount of time.

But I can use it in that way because I already have the knowledge and experience to direct the work, evaluate what it produces and decide whether it is fit for purpose.

Our pupils are at a rather different stage.

When children are learning how to research, the process matters as much as the outcome. Finding a website that doesn't quite answer the question, refining a search, reading a passage carefully and perhaps missing an important detail on the first attempt are all part of developing those skills.

We want children to become effective readers, researchers and critical thinkers. If a tool removes the need to practise those things, it may be working against our learning intentions, however useful its answer might be.

This isn't an argument against AI in education. I can see significant potential for AI to support learning, particularly through adaptive activities that respond to what a pupil understands and provide an appropriate next challenge.

But that is rather different from giving children a general-purpose tool that can carry out the intellectual work for them.

## The AI we didn't choose to introduce

What struck me most about our discussion was that, as a school, we haven't yet decided to make generative AI tools available directly to pupils.

We're working on our approach to AI, including the circumstances in which pupil use might be appropriate. There are educational, safeguarding and practical considerations that need to be addressed first.

Yet, without us making that decision, generative AI has effectively arrived in our classrooms through a tool that teachers and pupils have used for years: Google Search.

A school doesn't need to have adopted an AI chatbot or signed up to a specialist AI service for pupils to encounter generative AI. A child sitting at an ordinary Windows computer, opening a web browser and carrying out a Google search can now receive an AI-generated answer.

And that creates a problem for school leaders.

[Google's own support documentation](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/14901683?hl=en) states that AI Overviews are a core part of Search and cannot simply be switched off. There is an option to filter results to show only ordinary web links, but that is not the same as giving a school a straightforward way to disable AI-generated answers.

Schools using managed Google accounts or Chromebooks may have additional administrative controls available. The issue I'm concerned with here is much simpler, though: what happens when a pupil uses ordinary Google Search on a standard school computer?

It is the sort of activity that takes place in classrooms every day, often without anyone giving much thought to the search engine itself. Yet the experience has changed quite fundamentally.

The search engine is no longer simply pointing children towards information. It is increasingly interpreting that information and presenting an answer on their behalf.

That is a significant educational change, and one that schools may not have consciously considered.

## An alternative that's already available

In our school, we provide two alternative search tools for children through our school intranet. One of these is [Swiggle](https://swgfl.org.uk/services/swiggle/), developed by the South West Grid for Learning (SWGfL).

Swiggle is designed specifically for children, with a simplified presentation of search results, larger text and images associated with the websites returned. It doesn't include advertising, which is another considerable advantage.

It also doesn't present the kind of AI-generated overview that interrupted our planned history activity.

Of course, no search engine is completely safe, and suitable filtering and monitoring remain important. Nevertheless, I have greater confidence in a tool designed for primary pupils, used alongside our existing filtering arrangements.

The advertising point matters to me too. I have long been uncomfortable with the amount of commercial advertising that finds its way into classrooms through otherwise useful online resources, including videos.

An advert may be inappropriate for the children watching it. Even when it isn't, we are still placing a commercial message in front of pupils during a lesson.  I know I want us to be making conscious decisions about this rather than simply accepting.

There is, however, a practical issue with our alternative search tools.

Although they are available through our intranet, they aren't set as the default search engines in pupils' browsers. If someone opens a browser and types a question into the search bar, Google is quite likely to be used.

We've previously allowed supervised Google searching, particularly with upper Key Stage 2 pupils, so it isn't surprising that teachers might continue to use something familiar.

Our response to this week's discussion has therefore been quite straightforward: we've reminded staff that when children need to carry out online research, Swiggle is likely to be the more appropriate starting point for now.

It should give pupils the opportunity to find, read and evaluate information rather than having the answer generated for them.

## Something worth checking in your school

I suspect our experience won't be unusual.

Teachers have used Google Search for years. It's familiar, convenient and often the first place people go when they want to find something. It would be easy not to notice that the way it works has changed.

A tool that was once used mainly to find sources of information is increasingly becoming a tool that generates answers from those sources. That may be useful in many circumstances, but it can change the learning experience considerably.

Our discussion this week was a useful reminder that we need to look at the tools pupils are actually using, rather than just those we've provided for them.

For us, that means making sure staff know about the alternative search tools on our intranet and encouraging the use of Swiggle when children are carrying out research. For other schools, the arrangements and available controls may be different.

I'm certainly not suggesting that children should never encounter AI, or that ordinary Google Search should never be used in a lesson. There will be appropriate opportunities for pupils to learn about these technologies and how to use them critically.

But there is a difference between deliberately choosing to use AI as part of a learning activity and finding that AI has become part of an activity without anyone really making that decision.

So perhaps our experience is a timely prompt to check what's happening in your own classrooms. What search tools are pupils actually using, and are those tools still supporting the learning you intended?

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