Teacher attendance in schools participating in El Salvador’s AI education pilot rose from 76% to 97% during the program’s implementation, according to President Nayib Bukele.
The increase represents one of the notable changes associated with the education reform, which combines artificial intelligence with teacher support, digital platforms, technology, educational materials, and monitoring.
Bukele pointed to teacher attendance as an example of why the impact of the initiative should be viewed more broadly than the performance of AI tutors alone.
The implementation of the AI learning system included requirements for teachers to interact with the platform, including logging into and out of the system. According to the president, this coincided with a significant increase in teacher attendance across the participating schools.
Bukele argued that if an education program contributes to teachers attending school more consistently, and that increased presence subsequently helps students learn, the improvement should be considered part of the intervention’s overall impact.
At the same time, he acknowledged that the available data do not establish that AI technology alone caused the increase. Determining the individual causal effect of AI tutors, teacher attendance, motivation, training, and other components would require a different experimental design.
The broader pilot currently involves 171 public schools, where 1,198 students were assessed through PISA for Schools.
Their results in reading, mathematics, and science were comparable with average results in Germany and Sweden, providing the government with additional motivation to expand the model.
The reported rise in teacher attendance therefore adds another dimension to El Salvador’s experiment with AI-supported public education, as the country moves toward a much larger implementation.