Tania Mackie
Director, International Safeguarding and Digital Transformation
Lightspeed Systems
Director, International Safeguarding and Digital Transformation
Lightspeed Systems
Tania Mackie is Director, International Safeguarding and Digital Transformation at Lightspeed Systems, which protects more than 31,000 schools across 42 countries. A former principal, Quality Improvement Manager and Lead of Specialist Support Services, she leads Lightspeed’s international safeguarding and digital transformation work with schools, trusts, ministries and governments, and treats AI literacy as a child protection issue rather than a future one. She wrote the foreword to the 2027 Educators’ AI Guide and speaks this fall for Optimus Education in London and Manchester and at EdTech Scotland in Glasgow.
Children are already using chatbots for advice, reassurance and company, which means a young person’s first disclosure may be to a machine rather than to a trusted adult. Tania Mackie sets out what schools are actually seeing across 42 countries, why AI literacy is now a safeguarding responsibility rather than a curriculum extra, and the practical routines that teach pupils to think safely with the tools they already have open.
Register free to join 3,600+ educators on September 8–9, 2026.
Register for Free →