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Without a shared definition of AI competencies, schools cannot set meaningful learning targets, teachers have no professional development goal, and access frameworks have nothing to anchor them. Israel's National AI Competency Framework — adopted in August 2024 and co-created with educators — provides that definition, and now anchors every national AI literacy programme.
The Challenge
As AI entered Israeli classrooms at scale, the education ecosystem needed a shared definition of what AI competency meant. Without one, schools could not set meaningful learning targets, teachers had no professional development goal to build toward, and access frameworks had no competency threshold to anchor them. Most early responses focused on tool proficiency: how to prompt, which platform to use. The deeper need was more fundamental: a precise account of what every teacher and student needs to know, do, and value in order to engage responsibly with AI.
The Solution
The AI Competency Framework establishes a national, measurable standard for AI literacy in education. Co-created with educators and adopted as the national standard in August 2024, the framework defines AI competency across four dimensions: Knowledge, Skills, Values, and Attitudes. These four dimensions are developed together and now anchor every national AI literacy initiative.
The framework gives the education ecosystem a shared definition of what it is working toward. It converts that goal into something measurable and teachable, specifying what every teacher and student needs to know, do, and value, and describing what growth looks like at each stage.
The Framework
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AI competency requires all four dimensions working together
- Knowledge: Understanding how AI systems function, including learning mechanisms, training data, capabilities, limitations, and societal implications
- Skills: Core skills for effective engagement with AI, detailed below
- Values: Personal, cultural, social, and global values, including responsibility, transparency, fairness, human dignity, and privacy
- Attitudes: Curiosity, critical engagement, ethical responsibility, and measured openness to new developments
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The four core skills for effectively engaging with and deploying AI:
- Skill 1 - Identifying AI Mechanisms: Understanding how AI systems operate, recognizing their capabilities and limitations, and identifying AI in everyday contexts
- Skill 2 - Using AI Efficiently and Thoughtfully: Formulating effective prompts, selecting appropriate tools, and applying critical thinking to AI outputs, including recognizing errors and hallucinations
- Skill 3 - Taking Initiative and Creating Value: Applying AI creatively to solve real problems, managing the human-machine interface, and using metacognition to evaluate both processes and results
- Skill 4 - Functioning Ethically: Integrating fairness, privacy, and responsible decision-making into AI use; identifying bias; understanding long-term implications for individuals and society
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The four maturity levels map progression across a developmental arc
- Acquisition: Initial exposure, following rules and procedures set by others
- Understanding: Experimental engagement, testing, exploring patterns, building conceptual models
- Application: Independent transfer, completing tasks across familiar and new contexts
- Creation: Integration and extension, connecting across domains, developing new approaches, identifying gaps in one’s own competency
What The Framework Makes Possible
The value is systemic. A teacher designing a lesson, a principal planning professional development, a policymaker setting access requirements, and a researcher evaluating outcomes can now all work from the same definition. The framework does not prescribe how AI should be taught. It defines what competency means. That distinction leaves room for pedagogical diversity while ensuring the system moves in a coherent direction. The framework was adopted in August 2024, applied in the February 2025 AI Month initiative, and is now the operational foundation of Israel’s national AI literacy effort.
In May 2025, the European Commission and OECD published a joint review draft, Empowering Learners for the Age of AI, developed to inform PISA 2029. The draft covers knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions across developmental levels, and treats competency as the integration of all dimensions. The Israeli framework demonstrates that national implementation of these principles is achievable.
