Colombia uses AI in the classroom more than any other country in Latin America, and it’s also one of the worst performers on the PISA exam. That’s not a coincidence — it’s a warning that no parent, teacher, or country can keep ignoring.

What the numbers actually say

On September 8, the OECD published the PISA 2025 results, the exam that tested more than 760,000 15-year-olds across 91 countries. Colombia dropped in the two subjects that matter most: 381 points in math (down from 385 in 2022) and 399 in reading (down from 408 in 2022). Only science rose, to 414. The number that should really keep any school principal up at night: 71% of Colombian 15-year-olds don’t reach basic proficiency in math, and 55% fall short of the minimum expected level in reading. Colombia sits eight points above the Latin American average, but 82 points below the OECD average — a gap that doesn’t close with a semester of remedial classes.

What nobody tells you: using more AI isn’t the same as learning more

Here’s the data point almost nobody connects to the one above: 56% of Colombian students use AI weekly for schoolwork, the highest rate in Latin America — ahead of Peru (54%) and Uruguay (53%) — and ten points above the OECD average (46%). Colombia leads the region in classroom AI use and, at the same time, leads the decline. The OECD is careful not to claim AI causes the drop — it’s correlation, not proven causation — but it does flag something concrete: generative AI doesn’t improve learning when it replaces intellectual effort instead of supporting it. And that substitution isn’t landing on a healthy system: six out of ten Colombian students study in schools lacking materials or facing infrastructure problems that already made teaching difficult before ChatGPT existed. AI didn’t arrive to fix that gap. It arrived on top of it, and it’s widening it. PISA’s founder didn’t mince words this week: an entire generation risks losing exactly the skills it will need most in the AI era — telling fact from opinion, navigating ambiguity, evaluating information with independent judgment.

The real opportunity: what we can change without waiting on the Ministry

This is the part almost nobody writes about. There is something a school, a teacher, or a parent can do right now, without waiting for a policy reform. First, draw a clear line between AI as scaffolding and AI as substitute: have the student solve it first, then use AI to check or go deeper, not the other way around. Second, put explicit AI literacy in the curriculum — using it well is a skill, not something to simply ban or leave unrestricted. Third, and I mean this pointedly: before buying more tablets or ed-tech licenses, public money should go to the basics first — materials, infrastructure, more and better teachers — because no tool compensates for a classroom that lacks the minimum conditions to learn. And at home, something as simple as asking not “did you use AI?” but “can you walk me through how you got that answer?” separates use that builds judgment from use that just turns in an assignment.

I told my nephew that AI wasn’t going to spare him the math homework — it was just going to hand him the bill later, the first time he has to make a real money decision with no one’s answer to copy. The question I’m left with, and one I’ll leave with you if you have kids, nephews, or students around you: are you teaching them to use AI like a calculator that amplifies what they already know how to think, or like a shortcut that’s taking away their chance to learn how to think at all?

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