In the world of education, trust is everything. Families count on schools to be transparent, fair, and accurate—especially when it comes to something as sensitive as school fees. As AI becomes more common in school administration and marketing, it’s easy to assume it’s always the fastest or smartest option. But when trust is at stake, and accuracy matters most, it’s important not to be swept up in the hype.

The reality is, when it comes to financial information like school fees, “close enough isn’t really good enough”—it’s either right or wrong. And if the AI tools you’re using sacrifice accuracy for the illusion of speed, the cost may be measured in lost trust.

AI is capable of some great things for school business and marketing teams—automating messages, streamlining workflows, and even offering rough fee estimates. It’s worth embracing these strengths. But it’s equally important to understand AI’s limits. It can confidently present information that’s misleading or just plain wrong, which introduces risk.

Let’s take a common example: the typical school PDF fee schedule.

If it’s a multipage document filled with conditional discounts, levies, and fine print, a generic AI might be helpful to summarise—but it can just as easily oversimplify the numbers, misread the terms, or make assumptions that don’t apply.

On the flip side, a basic PDF with limited information won’t give AI the context it needs to respond accurately. It may invent information to fill the gaps with fabricated content, or offer only a high-level guess that omits important details like enrolment fees, payment plans, or sibling discounts.

Ultimately, both cases will lead confusion, complaints, a lack of clarity and unwanted surprises for the family-all of which have a big impact on trust.

Recent research by Apple, in their study The Illusion of Thinking, found that even advanced AI models often fail at complex tasks*, showing a “complete accuracy collapse” as problem difficulty increases. This highlights a key limitation: AI alone may not be reliable for interpreting intricate fee structures. Without the structured logic of purpose-built tools, AI can mislead, fabricate, oversimplify or even ‘collapse’—resulting in confusion and broken trust.

So the challenge here is to look past the hype and glossy promises of AI, especially when it comes to things that can impact trust, and consider meaningful ways to leverage AI without impacting trust – because once trust is broken, it’s incredibly hard to rebuild.

For school fees, where transparency and trust are essential, AI must work alongside purpose-built tools—not replace them. After all, accuracy isn’t optional when it comes to money, and AI alone is unlikely to deliver the truly personalised and precise quotes families need.

There’s a common misconception that AI-powered systems are always the fastest and most efficient option for capturing and delivering information. While conversational AI can feel dynamic and responsive, it often needs to ask multiple questions to gather the necessary data—especially for something as complex as school fees.

In contrast, a well-designed form or purpose-built flow can often gather the relevant inputs in one step—faster and more reliably than AI. No back-and-forth. No misinterpretation. Just a predictable and direct path to the answers.

While replacing forms with AI may seem like the natural way to go, it doesn’t always serve your audience well, or achieve your goals – often a simple, straightforward solution will be surprisingly efficient and deliver the best parent experience.

Where the true magic can happen is layering AI into purpose-built flows in meaningful ways to enhance the overall experience.

For school marketers and business managers, it’s tempting to plug in an off-the-shelf AI tool and hope for the best. But as we’ve seen, this approach can do more harm than good.

The smarter move is to let AI enhance purpose-built systems. That means using it to improve user experience, not replace logic. It means bringing in AI where it adds value—without losing the integrity of the data – providing families with clear, trustworthy information every time.

At Feesable, we’ve built our fee calculator to deliver personalised, accurate fee quotes every time. We’re also actively exploring how AI can make the parent experience even better—whether through natural conversations, smart prompts, agentic flows or deeper data integration.

Stay tuned.

We know that families don’t choose schools solely based on things like academics or fancy buildings —it really comes down to values, affordability, and ultimately trust.

AI has a lot of potential, but that doesn’t mean we should rush in or believe the hype. It’s essential to recognise the limitations and combine AI with systems that are reliable, predictable, and designed for humans.

With Feesable, school marketers and business managers can be confident they’re delivering the transparency and precision families expect. Because when it comes to money, it’s not just a number—it’s your reputation.

And in education, that’s priceless.

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*The definition of ‘complex tasks’ is open to conjecture but the overarching point is made to indicate that we can’t yet fully trust AI to deliver accurate results based on this sort of evidence.

You might also be interested to read the complementary article published on LinkedIn.

At Feesable, our School Fee Calculator helps schools to communicate fees in a transparent and simple experience that builds trust with parents.

Book a call to learn how Feesable can benefit your school.