Minister of Education, Youth Development, Sports and Digital Transformation Kenson Casimir says artificial intelligence (AI) should be used to support learning, not make students and teachers dependent on technology.
Casimir was responding to a question from St Lucia Times about the role of the Department of Digital Transformation in shaping and guiding the use of AI in education.
“What we have been doing is working on the exact rollout for that department that is going to be responsible for the digital transformation of education in Saint Lucia; the testing aspect, the research aspect, the AI, the ChatGPT and how it is that we can create a legal framework for how it operates and how it’s operationalised,” Casimir explained.
He said the Ministry’s approach is to ensure that AI is used to support learning while avoiding overreliance on the technology.
“AI, at the end of the day, is viewed as something that is supposed, from the perspective of the Ministry of Education…to augment all your efforts in learning, not make you less productive and dependent on it,” he insisted.
Danny Butcher is the Minister in the Ministry of Education with responsibility for Digital Transformation.
Casimir said the legal framework, including the laws governing the department and its full functions, as well as plans for rolling out digital transformation across schools, will soon be presented to Cabinet.
Casimir also spoke about the need to ensure teachers are equipped to manage AI in the classroom. He said that since taking on the role of Minister for Education in December 2025, he has received requests from teachers for devices that can support them in using new technology.
“They want a device that is given to them from the Ministry of Education that is tech-savvy enough to deduce, to provide the actual teaching capacity that teachers need to plug and chug and deal with AI, because of course, you know, with AI comes a lot of laziness that we want to mitigate against,” the Minister said. “So we want our teachers to have that level of capacity at their fingertips.”
He said discussions have taken place with the Ministry of Finance to explore such an intervention once funding becomes available.
Casimir said AI should be incorporated into teaching in a way that supports students without replacing their own effort.
“And so, school curricula, school practices, school interventions, teacher-to-student interventions, should really promote that aspect of AI as an additional tool to better educate our individuals without making them lazy and dependent on artificial intelligence,” he said.
While acknowledging that this will be difficult, Casimir said he hopes moral suasion, parental involvement and wider societal intervention can encourage young people to use AI responsibly.
He said the goal is to appeal to young people to “really use AI in the right way”.
Casimir noted that the growing use of AI also raises concerns beyond the education sector.
“AI, of course, is a huge concern, and again, the actual capacity of the Cyber Division of the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force is something that we have to also take into consideration and provide as much financial support to make it work even better,” he said.
