Artificial intelligence (AI) is envisioned as a new tool to accelerate the progress towards the achievement of SDG 4. Policies and strategies for using AI in education are central to maximizing AI’s benefits and mitigating its potential risks. Fostering AI-ready policy-makers is the starting point of the policy development process. This publication offers guidance to policy-makers in understanding AI and responding to the challenges and opportunities in education presented by AI. Specifically, it introduces the essentials of AI such as its definition, techniques, technologies, capacities and limitations. It also delineates the emerging practices and benefit-risk assessment on leveraging AI to enhance education and learning, and to ensure inclusion and equity, as well as the reciprocal role of education in preparing humans to live and work with AI. The publication summarizes three approaches to the policy responses from existing practices: independent approach, integrated approach and thematic approach. In a further step, it proposes more detailed recommendations and examples for planning AI and education policies, aligned with the recommendations made in the 2019 Beijing Consensus on AI and Education.