We asked 1,423 people who work in education how they use AI at work. They answered The AI Report’s Where You Stand benchmark between July 20, 2026 and November 2, 2026. Here is how far along they are, what holds them back, what they want from AI next and which tools the most advanced teams use, compared with all 14,452 people in the benchmark.
Key findings
- People in education are close to the benchmark average. 12% are leaders, against 14% of all respondents, and 65% are still early.
- The biggest blocker is picking the right tools (36%), followed by the skills gap (27%).
- Their top goal is to save time (45%). More of them than average want to make better decisions: 7% against 5%.
- ChatGPT is the most used AI tool (82% of those who named a tool), then Claude (63%) and Gemini (56%). Grammarly stands out: 28% use it, against 16% of all respondents.
- Leaders lean on Claude. 73% of leaders use it, against 57% of those still early.
How far along people in education are with AI
The largest share of people in education say they are “just exploring” (40%). 5% say AI is used across their company and 7% are rolling it out to their team.
- Just exploring
- Testing a few tools
- Using 1 to 3 tools for real
- Rolling out to their team
- Used across the company
- Helping others with AI
What holds people in education back
We asked for the single biggest blocker. Picking the right tools leads at 36%. If that is you too: shortlist tools by the job you need done.
- Education
- All respondents
What they want from AI in the next 90 days
45% want to save time, 28% want to build their AI skills and 10% want to grow revenue.
- Education
- All respondents
The AI tools people in education use
People named 3.5 AI tools each on average. These are the 12 most used, as a share of the 1,338 people here who named at least one. Compare any of them in our AI tool database.
- Education
- All respondents
What the leaders use differently
Leaders are the 177 people in education whose AI is rolled out to their team or used across their company. They named 4.1 tools each, against 3.1 for the 923 who are still early. These are the clearest differences.
| Tool | Leaders | Early | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude | 73% | 57% | +15 pts |
| Canva | 44% | 32% | +12 pts |
| Microsoft Copilot | 13% | 6% | +7 pts |
| Power BI | 9% | 3% | +6 pts |
| Otter | 8% | 3% | +4 pts |
| Notion AI | 8% | 3% | +4 pts |
- Share of each group who use the tool. Leaders: 172 people, early: 846 people.
Where they use AI at work
Writing comes first (79%), then personal productivity (58%) and research (57%). People could pick several areas.
- Education
- All respondents
- Asked July 20 to August 31, 2026: 835 answers.
Budget for a first AI project
36% are not sure yet. The most common amount named is under $500 (43%).
- Education
- All respondents
- Asked from September 1, 2026: 589 answers.
Who answered
46% decide, recommend or have a say in what their company buys.
Company size
- Education
- All respondents
Role
- Education
- All respondents
Say in what their company buys
- Education
- All respondents
What leaders told The AI Report podcast
“The more that you pollute the AI's context window, the less on course it stays.”
Jake George and Joe Jepsen, AI agent builders at Agentic Brain. Don't paste a whole course or manual into one prompt. Agentic Brain turned 15 hours of recorded teaching into structured modules held in a database, and the training agent pulls only the section it needs at each step. It runs inside Slack or Teams, where staff already work, lets people skip material they know, and still makes them pass the knowledge checks. Watch or read the episode.
Next steps
- Shortlist tools by the job you need done. The AI Report tool database compares 5,500+ AI tools by use case and price.
- Join the free live Claude session. Every Tuesday at 2pm ET, free for every reader.
- Get a plan built for you. The AI Report Pro turns your benchmark answers into a 90-day AI plan, step by step.
How do you compare?
Answer the same nine quick questions as these 14,452 people. See which of five AI types you are, how you compare with readers like you, and get a free 30-day AI roadmap by email.
Free. You also get The AI Report, the five-minute AI briefing, every weekday. Unsubscribe anytime.
Compare with other groups
The full benchmark: AI at Work Benchmark 2026, with every industry, role and company size side by side.
By industry: Professional services, Healthcare, Software and tech, Marketing and media, Manufacturing, Nonprofits and government, Financial services, Retail and e-commerce, Real estate, Legal.
By role: Executives and founders, Directors, Managers and team leads, Individual contributors, Consultants and advisors, Students and career switchers.
By company size: Solo professionals, Small businesses (2 to 50), Mid-size companies (51 to 1,000), Large enterprises (1,001+).
About this data
These numbers come from The AI Report’s Where You Stand benchmark. Between July 20, 2026 and November 2, 2026, 14,452 people completed it. This page covers the 1,423 who said they work in education.
- Answers are self-reported. People chose their own industry, role, company size and stage.
- “Early” means just exploring or testing a few tools. “Leaders” means AI is rolled out to their team or used across their company.
- People could pick more than one tool, so tool shares add up to more than 100%. Tool shares are out of the 1,338 people here who named at least one tool.
- Where people use AI was asked from July 20 to August 31, 2026 (835 answers here).
- Budget was asked from September 1, 2026 (589 answers here).
- Percentages are rounded to whole numbers.
- We never publish individual answers. A group only gets a page with 100 or more people, and we only compare groups of 30 or more.
- People who take an AI newsletter's quiz are more interested in AI than the average worker, so read these numbers as a benchmark of people actively working on AI, not a national average.
Last updated November 2, 2026. To cite this page: The AI Report, AI at Work Benchmark 2026, theaireport.ai/tools/benchmark.