Competition background and what it looks like this year
If your child is a strong writer, it’s easy for parents to treat the John Locke Essay Competition as a “nice boost” for top-university applications. The real problem is this: it looks like a 2,000-word essay, but it’s actually a project that requires multiple rounds of defining terms, researching, counterarguing, and rewriting. If you delay, it collides with the busiest part of the school calendar, and what gets submitted is often a rushed draft—not a mature argument.
This year’s questions are already out, and the timeline is tighter than most families expect. Registration opened on 2/2/2026, and registration closes on 3/31 (if your child isn’t registered by then, even a brilliant essay later can’t be submitted through the normal route). Submissions open on 4/1, and the standard deadline is 5/31. If you miss 5/31, there are paid extensions: 7 days to 6/7 (£25) or 21 days to 6/21 (£75). An extension doesn’t “raise” the score—it only buys you the right to submit when you’re late.
What parents and students most often underestimate is where the time actually goes. The time sink isn’t whether the English reads smoothly. It’s turning an instinct into a persuasive argument: defining the key term in the prompt, supporting claims with usable evidence, and directly facing the strongest counterargument. John Locke prompts are designed to expose essays that “sound smart” but never properly unpack the question.
Can students use AI?
The Institute’s stance is clear: you may use LLMs as research and thinking partners (to find counterexamples, test reasoning, and identify gaps), but they must never replace the human author. More importantly, they warn that overreliance tends to produce essays that look like thousands of others—and that any use of AI that does not lead to disqualification can still make your essay comparatively worse off against work produced without AI. In plain terms: AI can help you be more rigorous, but it rarely helps you be more original.
The John Locke Institute also states its AI policy explicitly:
Policy regarding the use of AI
Contestants are welcome to make use of large language models (LLMs) and other related tools in order to develop their thinking on the subject of their essays, and to stress test their arguments. Such online tools should be used for research support and as a thought partner, but certainly not as a substitute for the human author. Bear in mind that the kind of essay that will be produced by AI will generally be inferior – and markedly less original – than an essay produced by a human author who is engaging creatively and critically with automated tools. The Institute’s own examination techniques, and the assessment tools we ourselves have developed, are carefully designed to recognise and reward original thought and expression.
- May I use AI software, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc, in writing my essay?
- Yes, you may. But please be warned that an overreliance on LLMs etc will most likely mean that your writing will be very similar to thousands of other essays, and most likely less interesting, less original, and less compelling than essays written by contestants who have used technology as a subordinate collaborator in the creative process, rather than as a lazy short-cut.
Since any use of AI (that does not result in disqualification) can only negatively affect our assessment of your work relative to that of work that is done without using AI, your safest course of action is simply not to use it at all. If, however, you choose to use it for any purpose, we reserve the right to make relevant judgements on a case-by-case basis and we will not enter into any correspondence.
If you want a quick way to tell whether your child has truly started, don’t ask how many paragraphs they’ve written. Ask: Which question are you choosing? How are you defining the most important word in the prompt? What is the strongest opposing view, and how will you respond? If they can’t answer clearly, they’re still in “topic selection,” not in “argument building.
Approach ideas for a few prompts (not outlines to copy, but what high-scoring thinking looks like)
Economics: “Should we fear a cashless society?”
A basic essay stops at convenience vs. privacy. A stronger approach first defines what “fear” means (political risk? economic fragility? civil liberties?), then tests the system through lenses like resilience (outages, disasters), exclusion (who gets locked out), and concentrated power (surveillance, account freezes, financial discrimination). It must also face a strong counterargument: cashless systems can be designed with safeguards and privacy protections, so fear may partly be attachment to the old default. Handling that tension well is what makes it a real answer.
Philosophy: “Is it ever wrong to do the right thing for the wrong reasons?”
A clean framework separates whether the act is right from whether the person deserves moral credit. Then it tests cases where motives merely affect “moral worth” versus cases where motives can make the act itself suspect (doing good to gain power, manipulate others, or corrode institutional trust). A high-level essay also handles a hard counterexample: someone with bad motives who consistently saves lives. If your child can engage in that kind of case honestly, they’re operating at competition level.
Politics: “Is democracy in crisis?”
The easiest mistake is vague doom. A stronger essay defines “crisis” as something identifiable—breakdowns in legitimacy, peaceful transfers of power, rule of law, governing capacity, or rights protection—then argues either “yes, here is the mechanism,” or “no, this is painful adaptation,” and answers the key question: democracy has always been messy, so what is genuinely different now? Specificity is what turns this into a competition essay rather than a social-media opinion.
Public Policy: “What discount rate should be applied to long-run environmental policies? Why?”
This prompt isn’t just math. Discount rates embed a value judgment about future generations. A strong approach compares “market-based” discounting (reflecting opportunity cost of capital) with “ethical” discounting (intergenerational justice), defends a rate or even a declining rate over time, and directly addresses both extremes: too low can justify unlimited spending now; too high effectively treats future lives as automatically less valuable. This is a harder prompt and suits students with AP Economics or AP Government experience.
Science & Technology: “Should we be polite to ChatGPT?”
It looks light, but it’s really about norms and character formation. You can frame politeness as self-training (what habits we build), social spillover (how habits transfer to human relationships), and pragmatism (better collaboration and clearer prompts). Then you must face the strongest counterargument: it’s a tool—politeness may be unnecessary anthropomorphism. If your child can explain what politeness is for, rather than just insisting “be nice,” the essay will feel mature.
Have you noticed the pattern? Many prompts cannot be answered directly. You usually have to define and unpack key terms first—then argue.
Conclusion
Here is a rule that creates “useful urgency” without turning home into a pressure cooker: within one week of starting, your child should produce three things—(1) a one-sentence thesis, (2) a three-part argument skeleton, and (3) two strongest counterarguments (skeleton only). If they can’t, they haven’t reached the depth the competition demands yet.
Treat 3/31 as the entry ticket and 5/31 as the final bell. Extensions can buy time, but they can’t buy maturity.
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