Denmark is taking a tougher approach to artificial intelligence in schools, introducing immediate measures designed to stop students from using AI tools to complete written assignments they are expected to produce themselves.
The Danish government has announced that upper-secondary students will have to verbally defend written assignments completed at home, effectively adding an oral test of whether students understand and can explain the work they have submitted. The measure comes as schools face growing difficulties in determining whether a piece of work reflects a student’s own abilities or has been produced, partly or entirely, with generative AI. Education Minister Magnus Heunicke said action was needed immediately to ensure that AI does not undermine students’ skills, academic abilities and, above all, their ability to think independently.
From written paper to oral defence
The most visible change concerns major written assignments completed at home. Students will now be expected to defend their work orally, giving teachers an opportunity to ask questions about the arguments, sources, methodology and conclusions contained in the submitted paper. The requirement is particularly significant for the større skriftlige opgave (SSO), a major written assignment undertaken by around 9,000 students each year as part of Denmark‘s upper-secondary education system. The principle is straightforward: producing a convincing document is no longer necessarily enough. Students must also demonstrate that they understand what they have written. It represents a return to one of the oldest forms of academic assessment — the conversation between teacher and student — at a time when increasingly sophisticated AI systems can generate essays, summaries, arguments and other written material within seconds. The Danish Ministry of Education says it will work with schools to determine exactly how the oral defences should be organised.
More monitoring, fewer opportunities to use AI secretly
The oral defence is only one part of Denmark‘s response. Upper-secondary schools are also being instructed to use screen-monitoring tools during written examinations and to deploy firewalls that can filter the online content students are able to access during exams and teaching. The government is additionally encouraging schools to have students complete more written assignments on school premises and under controlled conditions. The idea is not simply to catch students after they have submitted AI-generated work, but to make the writing process itself more visible to teachers. Working at school also gives teachers more opportunities to provide feedback and assess how students arrive at their answers. That marks an important change in the logic of assessment. Instead of concentrating exclusively on the final product, schools are being encouraged to pay greater attention to the process that produced it.
Denmark is not banning AI from education
Despite the tougher controls, Denmark‘s approach should not be interpreted as a blanket rejection of artificial intelligence in schools. The country has already experimented with allowing students to use AI in certain educational contexts. In 2025, Denmark launched an experiment allowing upper-secondary students to use AI while preparing for English oral examinations. The government is also working towards a broader national strategy for the use of AI throughout the education sector. This suggests that Copenhagen is attempting to draw a distinction between using AI as a learning tool and using it to replace the student’s own work. That distinction is likely to become increasingly important as AI becomes a normal part of everyday academic and professional life.
A Nordic problem, not just a Danish one
Denmark‘s decision comes as other Nordic countries are also struggling to determine how schools should respond to generative AI. In Sweden, disciplinary actions involving unauthorised AI use reportedly increased dramatically between 2023 and 2025, prompting the government to review how schools are handling AI-related cheating. Norway has also moved towards much tighter restrictions on generative AI use among younger pupils. The Nordic debate therefore appears to be moving beyond the initial question of whether students should be allowed to use AI. The more complicated question is becoming when, how and under what conditions they should use it. That is a much harder problem to solve.
The new problem: proving that a student learned
Traditional education systems were built around a relatively simple assumption: if a student writes an essay, solves a problem or completes an assignment, the work provides evidence of what that student knows. Generative AI challenges that assumption. A student can now produce a polished text without necessarily possessing the knowledge or skills demonstrated by the text. At the same time, AI detection systems are not a perfect solution, creating the risk of false accusations and an ongoing technological arms race between students and institutions. Denmark‘s oral-defence approach attempts to bypass part of that problem. Rather than trying to determine with absolute certainty whether an AI system generated a particular sentence, teachers can ask the student to explain the reasoning behind the work. A student who genuinely understands an assignment should, in principle, be able to discuss it. But the policy also raises questions. More oral examinations mean additional work for teachers and potentially greater pressure on students who are less comfortable with oral presentations. Screen-monitoring and network filtering, meanwhile, raise questions about privacy and the appropriate level of technological surveillance in schools.
The bigger question for Nordic education
Denmark‘s measures point towards a broader transformation in education. For decades, schools have largely assessed what students produce. AI may force them to place greater emphasis on what students can explain, demonstrate and do without assistance. That could mean more oral examinations, supervised writing, classroom-based assignments, handwritten work and assessments conducted without internet access. But it could also eventually lead in the opposite direction: schools may decide that AI should be incorporated explicitly into assignments, with students assessed on how effectively and critically they use it. The real challenge is therefore not simply to keep AI out of schools. It is to determine which skills remain essential when machines can increasingly perform the traditional tasks used to measure those skills. Denmark’s immediate response is clear: if a student submits the work, the student should be able to defend it. Whether that becomes a temporary measure against AI cheating or a permanent change to Nordic education remains to be seen. For now, Copenhagen is betting that the best way to test whether a human actually learned something is still to sit across from that human and ask them to explain it.
Suggested Online Sources
Edition.cnn.com
Theguardian.com
Euronews.com
Uvm.dk
Education.ec.europa.eu
