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A closer look

Primary school teacher

AI can plan a lesson. It can't run a room of thirty seven-year-olds.

Supervising children and keeping order AI barely touches. Planning lessons and marking are where it gets closest, and even those are mostly out of its reach.

74 / 100

Mostly holds up against AI

AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Not Exposed

8 of the 20 jobs up close

Why this score?

The ILO rated each task in this job for how much of it AI could do. They average 26.1 out of 100, so the job holds up at 100 − 26.1 = 73.9.

ILO group “Not Exposed”: None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count.

AI helps JSA 2025
63
Usually good news: more of the work gets quicker without the job going away.
AI takes over JSA 2025
32
This is what most people mean by “exposed”. We keep it apart from helping on purpose.
Hands-on O*NET 31.0
23.4
Software can't do hands-on work, but robots might one day. How far they've got isn't on this site, because nobody measures it well enough yet.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index O*NET 31.0 Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Primary school teacher 74

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Lesson planning, differentiation and resource making.
  • Marking and progress reporting.
  • Administrative correspondence.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Managing thirty children in one room.
  • Noticing the child who is not alright.
  • Being a consistent adult in someone's week.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Teaching children to work with tools that will answer for them.
  • Assessment redesigned around what cannot be outsourced.
  • Pastoral load that keeps growing regardless of technology.

Written by a human, from the task data. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Low

32 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 63 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

23 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 11 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

11 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

It isn't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. This is the closest thing we have: how much fiddly handwork and cramped, awkward work the job takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

The numbers come straight from the US job database's entry for Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education. Its wider group, Primary school teachers, lands in the same place.

finger skill 21.4 · hand skill 7.1 · cramped spaces 5.5 · hands-on 23.4 · caring 4.85 of 7 · rule: hands-on under 50

from the source O*NET 31.0 data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

So, should primary school teachers be worried?

Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.

No. Supervising children and keeping order rate Very Low, and even planning and marking only reach Low. AI can take on a lot of the preparation and paperwork. What's growing is the part only a teacher can do: teaching children to use tools that will answer for them, and noticing the child who isn't alright.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing. Bank tellers survived the cash machine. The job just got more chatty.

Where this job could lead

Fancy a rematch?

Put primary school teachers up against another job, then send the result to someone who needs a little humbling.

Where this page's numbers come from