The AI Readiness Scorecard
Which step is your school on with AI?
Getting AI right in schools is a sequencing problem, not a technology problem. Most schools aren't stuck because they're doing nothing. They're stuck because they're working hard on the wrong step.
Five questions, about two minutes. You'll see the step your school is on, what it means, and the one thing that unlocks the next step.
Free. No sign-up to see the questions.
Built by Vaughn Littlejohns, a practising Director of Technology at an IB World School.
Every school leader I sit down with has already responded to AI in some way. Training bought. Tools blocked, or approved one at a time. A policy drafted, or parked while they wait to get it right. And almost every one of them has skipped the same first step: finding out where the school actually is. Different surface problems, one shared root.
It's not a willingness problem. It's a capacity problem: nobody has the hours to review every tool, every claim, every new release. The scorecard exists so you stop spending the capacity you do have on the wrong step.
It's free because I want to know what school leaders are actually scoring. Seeing where schools get stuck teaches me more than any survey I could run.
Question 1 of 5
Do you know where your school actually stands with AI?
Not what you suspect. What you could show a board. Tick what you genuinely have today:
Question 2 of 5
Could every teacher set AI expectations on a task without a meeting?
A working tool, not a policy document. Tick what’s true in your classrooms today:
Question 3 of 5
Could your parents describe the school's AI position in their own words?
Trust is built before governance, not by it. Tick what’s true today:
Question 4 of 5
Would the AI work survive if the person holding it left?
Formal, ratified, and not held together by one person. Tick what’s true today:
Question 5 of 5
Does your AI training shift a number you can point to?
PD that changes practice, not PD that fills an inset day. Tick what’s true today:
Last one. Your scorecard is next.
Done. Your scorecard is ready.
Where should the follow-up go?
Your result shows on this page the moment you submit. The email is for the follow-up: your result in writing, what to do with it, and the Littlejohns Letter, a short email on AI in schools you can use the same week. Unsubscribe anytime.
Your result
Your result is below. The email copy didn't send, so if you'd like it, email vaughn@littlejohns.org and I'll send it over.
Your school is on Step :
That's your next step, not someone else's finish line. Sequence beats speed.
Your school is at the starting point most schools are at, and it's the one place you can't skip. Right now the honest answer to "where are we with AI?" is a guess, and everything built on a guess wobbles. The next move isn't a policy or a tool. It's evidence: hear from your four groups (leaders, teachers, parents, students) and find out what's actually happening before designing the response.
What unlocks your next step: Run a baseline across leaders, teachers, parents and students before you design anything. That single move unlocks every step after it.
You know where you stand. What's missing is a shared, classroom-level way of communicating AI expectations, so right now every teacher is making their own call, task by task. The fix isn't a longer policy. It's a working tool teachers help build, so expectations are clear on any task without a meeting. Reduce decision fatigue, don't create it.
What unlocks your next step: Build a shared classroom-level expectations tool with your teachers, before formal policy. That unlocks the community step.
Your staff have clarity. Your community doesn't, yet, and that's the gap that turns a good policy into a contested one. A policy handed to a community that wasn't consulted arrives as an instruction, not an agreement. The move is a single, plain-language position anchored to your school's values, in parents' hands before anything goes to governance.
What unlocks your next step: Get a plain-language position, anchored to your values, to parents before the policy goes to the board. That unlocks governance that holds.
The groundwork is genuinely in place. What's left is making it formal and durable: ratified, owned by more than one person, with a review date in the calendar. A document with no owner is a record of intention, not governance. Design the structure first: who owns it, who reviews it, and when.
What unlocks your next step: Give the policy an owner, a review date, and a life beyond any one person. That unlocks training that compounds instead of fading.
You've sequenced this better than almost every school I meet. The last step is the one that makes it stick: training that builds real fluency, measured against your baseline, planned as a sequence rather than an event. A session you can't measure is a session you can't build on. Design the entry and exit ticket before the session.
What unlocks your next step: Design the measurement before the next session, so you can point to what changed. That closes the loop your baseline opened.
Every indicator, ticked. That puts your school in rare company, and it moves the question from "how do we start?" to "how do we keep it alive?" This is where most change actually dies: six to twenty-four months in, when attention moves on. The move now is the measurement loop, reassessing against your original baseline so adoption holds instead of quietly decaying.
What unlocks your next step: Re-run your baseline roughly a year on, and let the data set the next cycle.
Free things that help with this step
The Leader AI Readiness Self-Assessment template the printable version, to work through with your leadership team
Free course: AI in Education foundations for your staff while you gather the evidence
Free things that help with this step
The template library the student and staff agreements that put expectations in writing
Free course: AI in Education foundations a shared starting point for your teachers
Free things that help with this step
The Junior School Student Technology Agreement plain language, written to be read at home with a family
How the method runs why the plain-language position comes before policy
Free things that help with this step
The AI Policy Review Checklist pressure-test the policy across the academic and professional domains
How the method runs ownership, review cycles, and structure
Free things that help with this step
Free course: AI in Education foundations three recorded sessions and the workbook, for your staff
The Leader AI Readiness Self-Assessment template the paper version, for measuring again later
Free things that help with this step
The Leader AI Readiness Self-Assessment template the paper version, for re-running your baseline a year on
The Littlejohns Letter a short email on AI in schools you can use the same week
Sharing this internally? The step name, what it means, and the next action above are written to be forwarded to your Head or board as they stand.
Why sequence matters
Each step creates the conditions the next one needs.
A policy handed to a community that wasn't consulted arrives as an instruction, not an agreement. Training without shared classroom expectations doesn't stick. And everything designed without a baseline is designed on a guess. That's why the scorecard doesn't measure how much AI your school uses. It finds the first step where the conditions aren't in place yet, because that's where the work is.
The five steps are sequenced deliberately: the baseline comes first, then shared expectations, then the community position, then governance, and training last, because training is the only one you can measure against what came before it. The full method is here.