EXCLUSIVE | Delhi's AI Education Push: Ashish Sood on Preparing Students for Tomorrow

Being the national capital, Delhi needs to have its primary focus on two major areas. The first is learning outcomes, specifically foundational literacy and numeracy [FLN] outcomes. There is an ongoing nationwide debate about how a child in the sixth grade is unable to read a fourth-grade textbook. Since we are the national capital and a city-state, learning outcomes must be our foremost priority and concern. The second area is how AI is being discussed across the country. The theme of the recent AI Impact Summit was ‘sarvajan hitay’ [for the welfare of all]. Based on that vision, we need to expand digital education and deepen digital penetration across Delhi. If our children do not even have digital libraries or smart classrooms, how can they progress? We can only truly gauge the impact of AI when we are able to give them these essential tools. So, tracking learning outcomes deeply as well as ensuring the comprehensive availability of digital education parameters such as smart classrooms, language labs, information and communication technology [ICT] labs and digital libraries to our students are the two most critical aspects. Infrastructure is vital, too. We must have excellent, well-equipped classrooms and schools, it all goes hand-in-hand. So, our dual focus area is: ensuring all schools become National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy Bharat Scheme-certified based on FLN outcomes, and maximising the integration of digital education in our schools.

We need to give them exposure to these gadgets today if we want them to handle AI and other technologies effectively in the future. Whether we want it or not, it is the reality of our times. We must consider the many challenges currently emerging in society. Look at the kind of content being served to children today through social media. Children nowadays need to be aware of things like fakes and deepfakes. They need to know whether the face they are seeing of a particular actor or hero is real or not. They need to develop the skiils for that recognition. At the same time, if they read somewhere on the internet that a problem was solved using AI, they should understand what AI is and how it functions.

To address this, we launched a programme last year called ‘AI Grind’ in our schools. Delhi is the first state in the country where 5,00,000 students worked on city-centric problem-solving using A3 sheets. We provided the children with 10 problem statements covering areas like the environment, healthcare and smart traffic management. The children brainstormed on how to solve them. You only learn when you start thinking about how a particular tool can bring about real-world change. Otherwise, an entire previous generation lost out simply due to computer inhibition, thinking they would not be able to do this or lagging behind because they thought they did not even know how to use WhatsApp.  They only picked it up gradually over time. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to give today’s children exposure and information so they can learn and understand it right from the start.

Providing these resources is precisely our job. That is why we have set up ICT labs in 175 schools where computers had been non-functional for the past 10 years. We have delivered these functional ICT labs according to CBSE standards, equipping them with up to 40 computers per lab so that students get the necessary exposure. Providing this exposure is our most critical task today.  

As for inequality at home, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi is driving digital India’s penetration and data is becoming highly affordable, resources will naturally increase in households over time. In the meantime, making these facilities available at schools is our responsibility. This is why our smart digital libraries include Chromebooks, ensuring these children get everything they need to navigate the new world. If we don’t do this, inequality will keep growing. Parents of private-school children can afford to provide everything.  So, the state must step in here as a parent and a guardian to provide the necessary handholding, which we are actively doing.

We have run collaborative training programmes with Google and Microsoft to train our teachers. We have also partnered with prominent nearby universities that have these resources, like Manav Rachna, to train the principals of our CM Shri schools. Additionally, we have set up systems to train teachers on how to effectively operate the newly installed smart classrooms and utilise available AI modules like Gemini and others. This will be expanded further. As our teachers gradually grasp these concepts and as our resources grow, we will continue providing targeted training.

During recent discussions with principals, we tried to build a consensus regarding teachers’ training. Currently, what happens is that the same few teachers end up undergoing training repeatedly. We want capacity building and training for every single teacher. To achieve this, we plan to design training modules and map out schedules six months in advance during the summer vacations. This will allow us to offer them their desired training, capacity building and structural handholding. We are actively working to make our Vidya Samiksha Kendra one of the finest in the country.

The prime minister has provided a simple and elegant solution to this in the NEP 2020. The policy explicitly mandates that primary education must be delivered in the student’s mother tongue or the local language of the respective state. This provision itself resolves the conflict.

My primary education should be in my mother tongue. For instance, I can speak and deliver speeches in English, but my core thought process, public speaking and overall expression flow much better in Hindi. The PM has effectively catered to this human aspect by designating the mother tongue for primary education in the NEP. There should be no room for debate on this matter, but if certain individuals still want to debate it, let them. The nation has already started moving forward on the path shown by the prime minister.

In any existing system, there is always room to evolve and move forward. NEET was implemented around 2018. How did admissions happen before that? There were state-level exams and everyone knows that the practice of charging capitation fees was rampant across the country. Students from Delhi had to pay massive amounts of money to secure admissions in places like Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Nagpur. When NEET became fully uniform, it levelled the playing field. It ensured that the child of an astronaut and the child of a rickshaw puller receive the same opportunity based strictly on merit. Ever since this system took off completely around 2020, it forced private institutions and people to think differently. I view the introduction of NEET as a revolutionary reform brought about by Narendra Modi in the education sector. It established meritocracy. While I do not wish to comment directly on recent isolated incidents, the Central government is investigating the matter thoroughly and has substantial evidence. The Union Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, under the PM’s leadership, is handling and resolving these challenges successfully. The re-examination was also conducted very smoothly. To eliminate the deep-rooted malpractices and nexuses, the government’s biggest step was executing the standardised NEET exam itself, ensuring merit prevails. Similarly, introducing the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) brought all central universities on to a single platform, which is another revolutionary shift. As we move forward, challenges will naturally arise, but I am confident that the government will overcome them.

We have instituted a rigorous merit-based entrance examination for admission into the sixth grade for CM Shri schools. Eventually, when all schools in Delhi reach that benchmark, we will implement it uniformly. In a CM Shri school, every single classroom is a smart classroom, and there is 100 per cent functionality of ICT labs and digital libraries. We will expand these parameters to other schools as well, but in the first phase, they are deployed across all CM Shri schools. These schools feature dedicated, focused classes on foundational virtues like New Era of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem and Vision (NEEV), the Science of Living and national values (rashtra neeti), preparing children for advanced education under rigorous parameters.

Therefore, it is not a matter of creating inequality; it is a phased availability of resources. We are proving that this model is functional, operational and yielding high-quality results across these 75 schools. As we secure more funds, we will scale it up. The target of this government is that before the end of the current tenure and heading into the elections, every single school classroom will be a smart classroom, and every school will have a fully functional ICT lab. There is absolutely no question of disparity.

In Delhi, our ultimate focus is that a teacher’s primary activity should strictly be teaching. However, duties like census tracking are paramount national duties. Every citizen must contribute to them because they require a high degree of commitment and institutional responsibility that only a government functionary can reliably shoulder. Therefore, I do not view that as separate or conflicting work; it is an intrinsic part of nation-building and must be done. We have initiated extensive discussions and administrative processes to ensure that our teachers are minimized from routine, non-teaching clerical jobs. For instance, they shouldn’t be bogged down with preparing salary sheets.

We are looking at future frameworks where we can introduce AI-driven attendance systems in our schools. If teachers have seamless access to AI tools, they can instantly design monthly classroom tests and even grade them using AI. Daily student attendance can be captured automatically via AI cameras, saving crucial daily administrative time. If we can provide them with AI tools to seamlessly generate question papers and manage evaluations, their productive hours can be redirected where they matter most: actual classroom teaching. That is the direction we are thinking in.

The absolute primary requirement is that every school becomes a Nipun-certified school by accurately measuring and refining learning outcomes. Even though we are a small state, large states have also taken up this challenge. Improving our students’ learning outcomes is the core focus of the PM and every state is implementing it in its own way. We must prepare society to gradually shift its focus away from raw marks on a report card. The focus should instead be on how a child is absorbing education and whether it is shaping them into an intelligent, knowledgeable, and responsible citizen. We are already seeing this shift: no matter what you score in your 12th Boards, you must clear NEET for medical admissions, or pass CUET to get into top institutions like SRCC. This is reducing the marks-driven psychological pressure on children, allowing us to cultivate better citizens for the future. This is also the core objective of the NEP—preparing a generation rooted in the Indian Knowledge System, alongside curricula like the Science of Living, art and national ethics. Additionally, our government wants to focus heavily on mental health. Children are consuming a massive amount of information directly from the internet. They face immense peer pressure, the pressure of constant comparison and the trauma of being trolled on social media. Navigating these factors to raise a mentally agile and emotionally strong generation is one of our greatest challenges over the next decade.