For teachers

Written by students. Works because teachers let it.

STAIRS is four rungs and a five-line pledge for students thinking about their own AI use. Nothing lands in a classroom without you. This page is what you need to know, and what you can use next week.

What it is, shortly

The Ladder is four questions a student can ask themselves before, during, and after using AI on a piece of work: Understand, Attempt, Augment, Own. The Pledge is five lines a student signs to themselves, not to us and not to their school. Neither is a detection tool. Neither reports to anyone.

If you already have an AI policy

Good. STAIRS is meant to sit inside your policy, not replace it. The language is deliberately behavioural (what the student is doing) rather than prescriptive (what the AI is allowed to do). That means it works in schools that allow AI, schools that don’t, and subjects where the right rung is different.

What you can use in the next assignment

  • A plain-text Ladder that fits on one page: /ladder.txt. Print it, hand it out, put it on the wall.
  • A line you can add to the rubric: “In a short note at the end of your work, tell me which of the four rungs you operated at, and what you got from the AI. Honest disclosure does not affect your grade. Undisclosed AI use does.”
  • A one-minute exercise for the first week of term: ask a student to read paragraph three of their draft aloud and explain it without notes. If they can’t, they skipped Rung 4. That’s the whole framework in one minute.

What to ask of your students

Two things. First, that they disclose their AI use honestly on a piece of work, at least once, so the conversation becomes normal. Second, that they can defend what they turn in without the AI open. That’s the entire point of the Ladder compressed into one sentence.

What STAIRS is not

  • Not a detection tool. We don’t classify text. We don’t process student work.
  • Not a grading rubric. Your professional judgement still decides what’s good.
  • Not an integrity enforcement arm. We do not contact your school about your students.
  • Not affiliated with any AI company.

Bring it to your school

If you’d like to run STAIRS in your classroom or across a department:

  • The content is CC BY-SA 4.0. Adapt it for your context if you need to.
  • If you want to be listed as a chapter on the About page, email us.
  • If you want to hear how other teachers have used it in class, ask [EDIT: named contact] via hello@stairspledge.org.

Where this sits alongside official guidance

Ministries and national bodies are writing their own frameworks. STAIRS is compatible with all of them we’ve read. The Ladder is what a student can do today, on the assignment in front of them, without waiting for the policy to land.

The evidence we’re working from

Questions, corrections, or you’d like to run this in your school: hello@stairspledge.org.