Two-thirds of school learners surveyed in four countries, including South Africa, use AI chatbots to help them prepare for exams, according to Oxford University Press. Its Digital Learning: Insights from the Classroom report surveyed learners and teachers in South Africa, Brazil, the UK and Hong Kong, and found that 66% of learners across the whole sample used AI chatbots for exam preparation.

The findings come as hundreds of thousands of South African matrics write their final exams, which began on 13 October and end on 26 November.

Learners described AI as an interactive study aid and a stand-in when a teacher is not around to answer a question. Free tools such as Google Gemini and ChatGPT work through apps and browsers, while Meta's AI inside WhatsApp and Facebook uses less data, which matters for South African learners paying for their own mobile data. Most learners in the survey drew a clear line: using chatbots for revision, planning and generating ideas was fair, but using them to do the work was not.

"People aren't retaining the information if they're just copying and pasting it, kind of defeats the point of learning," one learner said.

Teachers use AI even more. Across the four countries, 82% said they use chatbots for research, 74% to create resources, 66% for admin and 56% for marking, and only 3% said they never use them. The South African results show a sharper divide in access. In South Africa, 18% of learners surveyed said they had no access to a digital device in at least one setting, compared with 13% in the UK, 4% in Brazil and none in Hong Kong.

South African teachers, by contrast, were well equipped, with 91% reporting access to a laptop.

MyBroadband's Luis Monzon reported the Oxford findings alongside the matric exam timetable. The Department of Basic Education describes the National Senior Certificate exams as a gateway to further education and access to the economy. One teacher in the Oxford survey summed up the general view: "No matter what we think about AI, it's going to be there, so they need to be able to use it properly."

Matric exams are written on paper, without a chatbot in the room, which makes how learners use AI while studying matter a great deal. We covered a randomised trial of nearly a thousand students that found those who used an unrestricted chatbot scored 17% worse once it was taken away, while a version that gave hints instead of answers removed that harm. The learners in Oxford's survey seem to sense the same thing on their own.

So the practical advice for matrics and their parents is simple: ask a chatbot to explain a concept, quiz you or check your working, not to give you the answer. The access figure is the other half of the story.

If close to one in five South African learners lacks a device in at least one setting, AI study help can widen the gap between learners as easily as it closes it, which is why getting affordable devices into hands matters as much as the tools themselves.

You might also like our piece on ChatGPT for Teens, Injini's AI for Education programme, and a Grade 9 learner's AI research.

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