Experts say modular curricula, ongoing teacher training and targeted digital infrastructure can make future skills accessible to rural and urban children alike.
Most Indian adults remember learning by rote: fill out the answer, repeat the sentence, clear the exam. For a child today, that feels like training for an older world.
With smartphones, chatbots and AI tools transforming work, parents and teachers worry: will our children find good jobs if schools do not change? That worry is real, and it is pushing a debate about what schools must teach next.
India already has the policy signals. The Ministry of Education has taken a big step to teach AI to students from grade 3. CBSE has begun the process of preparing the framework to teach AI language to students.
The National Education Policy 2020 named digital literacy, critical thinking and life-skills as priorities and asked states to make learning more multidisciplinary and practical. But policy alone will not remake classrooms overnight.
Though, it is a much-needed beginning. However, with AI growing rapidly worldwide through tools like ChatGPT, we must act fast to prepare for an AI-driven future.
It's not just about learning to code, build apps, or create AI tools, it's about preparing for a future where AI will handle many of the things we currently teach in schools.
This means India's curriculum and skill development must evolve, not only in elite private schools but also in government schools across the remotest regions. Along with teacher training, better infrastructure, and stronger digital access, we have a big task ahead of us.
Access is improving but uneven. Recent UDISE+ and ministry reports show a sharp rise in basic digital facilities in many schools, yet many others still lack reliable internet and devices.
In short, roughly two-thirds of schools now report some form of internet access, but quality and device availability vary widely across states and rural areas.
National projects such as BharatNet and state connectivity pushes have expanded 4G and broadband to hundreds of thousands of villages, a necessary step if online AI tools are to reach rural classrooms.
Meanwhile, DIKSHA and other government platforms already host thousands of lessons and teacher courses, proving content can scale if schools are online.
Technology will not help unless teachers know how to use it. Raghav Gupta, Founder and CEO of Futurense, says training must stop being a one-off.
He says, "We require a system that is practice-driven, ongoing, and closely related to career advancement." He urges regional teacher hubs, mentor trainers and promotion linked to classroom innovation, not just exams.
Practically, that means in-service training where teachers observe peers, run small coding projects, lead enquiry lessons and use simple AI tutors. When training is tied to recognition, certificates, promotion points or school awards, teachers are more likely to try new methods.
Raghav Gupta argues critical thinking, coding and AI literacy must become basic literacies, not add-ons. "These are basic literacies of today's world, just like reading and arithmetic were in the last century," he says.
A workable approach is modular learning: short coding units, project tasks that cut across maths and social science, and bilingual AI tools that explain concepts in local languages.
Assessment should reward problem-solving and projects as much as written tests. NEP 2020 supports multidisciplinary learning and project work, which can be a foundation for these changes.
Devices and data cost money. Gupta suggests low-cost AI tools that run on shared smartphones, rotating mobile labs and localised content as practical fixes.
"An AI tutor on a basic smartphone can help a child in a remote village as much as a student in a city," he says.
Public-private partnerships can subsidise devices and build community device pools. DIKSHA's rich content and BharatNet's expanding backbone give a chance to reach scale, but only if states invest in device-sharing models, teacher support and offline content for low-bandwidth zones.
Change will not be instant. But the ingredients exist: a clear policy (NEP 2020), growing connectivity, strong national content platforms and practical ideas from educators and edtech founders.
If India focusses on training teachers, designing modular curricula for low-resource classrooms and rolling out affordable, local tech, its schools can prepare children for a future where AI is a tool, not a threat.
As Raghav Gupta puts it, schools must become ecosystems that "prepare children for constant change."