The Complete Guide to Using AI in the Education Industry in Solomon Islands in 2025

By 2025 the Solomon Islands stands at a turning point: while there is currently the current lack of AI-specific legislation in the Solomon Islands, the government is actively exploring how AI can strengthen classrooms and digital infrastructure, and Minister Tozen Leokana has highlighted AI's power to create personalized learning paths and provide real-time feedback in schools (Minister Tozen Leokana's address on AI's impact on education in the Solomon Islands).

Regional research also flags AI's potential to tackle climate vulnerability, geographic isolation, and cultural preservation across the Pacific, so practical upskilling matters: programs like Nucamp AI Essentials for Work 15-week bootcamp teach prompt-writing and applied AI skills teachers and administrators can use now.

Imagine an intelligent tutor adapting to a student on a remote island and giving instant feedback while educators safeguard human agency and data privacy - practical, locally attuned steps like that will shape how AI benefits Solomon Islands classrooms in 2025 and beyond.

“AI is not just a future concept; it's here, and it's reshaping the way we teach and learn,” said Leokana.

The Solomon Islands education system is a patchwork shaped by geography, tradition and state policy: primary education runs six years but is not compulsory, with less than 60% of children entering that period and about 72% of entrants completing foundation schooling, while secondary education is a seven‑year academic track with markedly lower participation - gross rates near 32% for boys and 27% for girls - so many learners stop after junior levels or move into vocational training tied to village life and subsistence skills.

Governance is led by the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development working with registered Education Authorities and Provincial Education Boards to administer state and community schools (about 74% of primary and secondary schools are state‑owned), satellite schools extend access to isolated communities, and fee‑free basic education grants aim to reduce costs for families.

Higher education options remain limited and concentrated in Honiara (Solomon Islands Teachers College, Honiara Technical Institute and a branch of the University of the South Pacific), prompting expanded distance learning and ICT efforts to reach students across six main islands and more than 900 smaller islets.

For a concise snapshot of enrolment and system structure, see the Solomon Islands education overview and the country's non‑state actors profile.

The Solomon Islands government has signalled a clear turn toward practical, locally rooted AI policy for schools in 2025: Minister Hon. Tozen Leokana announced a commitment to develop an AI‑driven education policy that prioritises a National AI in‑Education Strategy, teacher upskilling and AI literacy, investment in digital infrastructure, ethical AI and data‑privacy rules, and stronger emphasis on AI and STEM pathways to future jobs - messages delivered at International Education Day where a Tok Stori on “Artificial Intelligence and Education: Challenges and Opportunity” and a robotics demo from Woodford captivated students and teachers alike (Solomon Star report on government AI education policy).

That policy push sits alongside MEHRD's broader refresh of the ICT in Education Master Plan and recent leadership and partnership programmes that are building the human capacity needed to pilot AI tools in classrooms (Sunday Isles Education coverage of the ICT in Education Master Plan refresh), signalling a strategy that pairs hardware and connectivity with community consent, curriculum guidance and teacher training so an intelligent tutor on a remote atoll can help rather than replace a local classroom mentor.

“Together we can ensure that AI enhances learning and teaching for generations to come,” Minister Leokana said.

Key programs and international frameworks are already in place that Solomon Islands education leaders can draw on to shape AI in classrooms: Millennium@EDU's Sustainable@EDU Project Co‑Work & Implementation supplies a practical policy architecture, ICT‑in‑education toolkits and a Data@EDU governance model to plan resilient pilots and continuity plans (Sustainable@EDU Project Co‑Work & Implementation policy toolkit and ICT toolkits); the site's AI@EDU hub collects UNESCO's teacher competency guidance, GenAI and explainable AI resources useful for local teacher upskilling (AI@EDU hub: UNESCO teacher competency guidance and GenAI/XAI resources); and MISFI (INTEL® Skills For Innovation) offers transferable “skills for innovation” curricula that can plug into STEM and vocational pathways (MISFI - INTEL® Skills For Innovation curricula for STEM and vocational pathways).

Together these toolkits - policy frameworks, data governance checklists, virtual academy models and teacher competency frameworks - create a ready menu of options so pilots in remote schools can prioritise connectivity, consent and curriculum alignment before scaling an AI tutor or assessment tool.

“The question is no longer should students use AI, but rather: What skills do we equip them with to prepare for a future where AI is a part of their life?”

In the Solomon Islands today, AI is already being shaped into practical classroom supports rather than distant futurism: ministers and educators talk about intelligent tutors offering real‑time feedback and personalised learning paths, and AI tools are being trialled to spot student response patterns, personalise content and free teachers from time‑consuming tasks so they can focus on pedagogy and relationships.

ACER's research highlights both the promise - adaptive learning that tracks progress, automates assessments and uses low‑cost chatbots to keep learning going during disruptions - and the stark barriers, noting that more than 80% of teachers in the Solomon Islands reported no access to digital resources, which makes teacher training and connectivity investments urgent (see ACER's work on teacher agency in a technology‑empowered world).

Practical classroom uses mirror global guidance - automating attendance and grading, generating lesson plans, and providing on‑demand tutoring - while cautionary advice from the British Council stresses clear rules, equity and privacy checks when deploying tools.

These approaches can help turn pilots into reliable supports so an intelligent tutor on a remote atoll gives instant feedback without replacing the teacher at the front of the class; successful scale will depend on teacher upskilling, co‑design with communities, and robust data protections referenced by local coverage of Minister Leokana's AI vision for education.

“AI is not just a future concept; it's reshaping the way we teach and learn,” said Hon. Tozen Leokana.

Global AI leadership - led by the United States with 40 notable models in 2024, China with 15 and Europe with three - matters for the Solomon Islands because it shapes where tools, investment and governance models come from and how affordable those tools will be as they trickle into classrooms; the Stanford HAI 2025 AI Index shows U.S. private investment dwarfs others ($109.1B in 2024 vs.

China's $9.3B), but also that inference costs fell over 280‑fold by late 2024, quickly lowering technical barriers to entry and making adaptive tutors and chatbots more realistic for remote schools.

Regional leaders - Singapore, South Korea, India and China - are actively embedding AI into education with national plans for teacher training, personalised learning and smart‑classroom pilots, offering practical models the Solomon Islands can study while avoiding pitfalls around privacy and equity highlighted in comparative analyses.

For policymakers and school leaders in Honiara and the provinces, the takeaway is simple and concrete: leverage falling costs and regional partnerships to pilot locally‑relevant AI tools, prioritise teacher upskilling and data‑governance, and adopt the responsible frameworks other nations are already testing so AI augments classroom mentorship rather than eclipses it (see the Stanford HAI 2025 AI Index Report on AI models and investment and the CRPE country case studies on AI in education policy for guidance).

Framing AI for Solomon Islands classrooms works best by thinking in four practical “schools”: Symbolic AI - rule‑driven, highly explainable systems that can encode local curricula, attendance and consent rules so a machine can show exactly why it flagged a result (see how symbolic engines make decisions transparent at SmythOS); Neural / Machine‑Learning - data‑hungry pattern recognisers that power adaptive tutors and speech/transcription tools but need connectivity, training data and strong privacy safeguards; Neuro‑Symbolic hybrids - the promising middle ground that marries neural pattern recognition with symbolic logic to give personalised help plus human‑readable reasons for decisions (explored in detail at ileafsolutions); and Human‑centred / Ethical AI - governance, consent scripts and teacher‑led prompts that keep educators in charge and protect student data (see Nucamp's ethical AI prompts for classroom consent and discussion guides).

For Solomon Islands the takeaway is concrete: use symbolic rules where traceability and offline resilience matter most, bring in neural models for adaptive feedback only where data and safeguards exist, and pilot neuro‑symbolic systems to balance personalization with explainability - so an intelligent tutor on an outer atoll can help a child learn while a teacher still controls why and how that help happens.

SmythOS Symbolic AI applications, Ileaf Solutions neuro-symbolic education systems and Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus - ethical AI prompts for classrooms offer a practical roadmap for pilots and policy.

“Production teams that succeed treat symbolic logic as the ‘senior investigator' and neural networks as the ‘data analyst.'”

Data governance, ethics and privacy must be the pillars that hold any AI pilot in Solomon Islands classrooms together: using maturity models helps education leaders move from ad hoc tools to accountable systems, and resources such as the TDWI Data Quality Maturity Model assessment for improving dataset quality offer a practical way to assess and raise the quality of the datasets that power adaptive tutors and reporting; meanwhile NASCIO's data governance maturity models guide for ministries lays out a stepwise path so ministries can plan roles, policies and audits rather than hoping privacy gaps are noticed after a breach.

Practical ethics belong alongside those models: classroom consent scripts, teacher-led prompts and discussion guides - like the ethical AI classroom prompts and human-agency guidance inspired by Hon. Tozen Leokana - translate policy into everyday practice so a teacher decides when an AI summary of a pupil's progress can be shared beyond the school.

Framing governance around data quality, clear consent, staff training and a maturity roadmap makes it possible to capture the efficiency gains and cost-savings AI promises without trading away student privacy or teacher agency.

Practical steps for schools and teachers to adopt AI in the Solomon Islands start with small, measurable pilots that tie directly to national learning goals: design one-term trials that map AI-supported activities to SDG 4 indicators (teacher training, ICT skills and learning outcomes) so progress is tracked against recognised targets (GEM Report SDG 4 indicators for education).

Equip teachers with ready-made consent scripts and classroom discussion guides - use the Ethical AI prompts for education and human agency to centre teacher authority and student privacy in every rollout.

Prioritise routines that save teacher time (automating attendance, basic grading and lesson‑drafting) and use local cost‑saving projections to justify devices, connectivity and training investments (AI cost‑saving projections for education companies in Solomon Islands).

Finally, pair tech with targeted upskilling for administrators and teachers most affected by automation so pilots don't replace local roles but retool them - start with one classroom, measure learning and consent compliance, then scale where outcomes and SDG alignment are clear; imagine a teacher watching AI surface a pupil's reading gaps in real time and using that prompt to strengthen, not supplant, a human-led lesson.

The next steps for AI in Solomon Islands education are practical and civic: use the International Day of Education as an annual rallying point to renew commitments to access and equity (see the UN's International Day of Education), run small, SDG‑aligned pilots that prioritise teacher upskilling and data governance, and lock in classroom‑level safeguards such as consent scripts and ethical prompts so communities stay in control; concrete training pathways - like Nucamp's 15‑week AI Essentials for Work bootcamp - can give teachers and administrators the prompt‑writing and applied skills to run those pilots and turn smart tutors into trustworthy classroom partners.

Pair those human‑centred moves with cost‑saving analyses and staged digital investments so devices and connectivity reach outer atolls without sacrificing privacy or pedagogy, and use local celebrations and coverage (for example, Honiara's International Education Day events) to build public support for scaled pilots.

Treat policy, practice and community consent as equally urgent: pilot, measure learning and consent compliance, then scale where student outcomes and equity are proven.

“By participating in the International Day of Education, sharing awareness, and advocating for accessible and transformative education for all, we can pave the way for a more equitable and peaceful future for generations to come,” she said.