The school uses AI and your child is too young for the account

Term starts, the school announces it will be working with AI, and at home nobody asks the obvious thing: which account does my child sign in with, and are they even old enough to have it?

School account: the administrator sets the age

In Google Workspace for Education the school's administrator designates users as under or over 18, across the organisation or per unit. That label is not paperwork, it cuts services. Users designated as under 18 cannot use Gemini in Classroom to create or edit content, resources or assignments.

Personal account: the country decides

If the work happens at home on the pupil's personal account, a different number applies: the minimum age for a Google Account in your country. Ireland and the Netherlands are 16, France 15, Spain 14, Portugal 13. A 15 year old in Dublin can be set the homework and not be allowed to open the account it is done on.

The European rule that already reaches the school

Since 2 February 2025 the EU AI Act requires providers and deployers of AI systems to take measures for a sufficient level of AI literacy among the people operating them. A school using AI in class is a deployer. From 2 August 2026 national authorities can enforce it.

Three questions for the first parents' evening

• Which account does my child work on, the school's or their own, and who created it?
• Are they designated as under 18 in the school's system, and what does that cut off?
• What AI training have the teachers who will use it in class actually had?

These are not confrontational questions. They are the three a school with a plan has already answered, and the three that reveal at once whether AI came in through the door or through the window.