Multiple departments in Henan Province have jointly issued an implementation guideline aimed at advancing artificial intelligence education and its application in primary and secondary schools, with the goal of achieving full coverage across the province by 2030 and ensuring no fewer than 10 class hours per academic year.
The guideline was jointly released by the Henan Provincial Department of Education, the Henan Provincial Department of Science and Technology, the Henan Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology, and the Henan Provincial Association for Science and Technology, setting out deployments for advancing AI education and application across primary and secondary schools in the province, accelerating the construction of an AI education system for these schools, promoting deep integration of AI into primary and secondary education and teaching, and cultivating groups of young people with innovative potential.
The guideline specifies the overall requirements for advancing AI education and application in primary and secondary schools. It adheres to a people-oriented approach, application-driven orientation, coordinated advancement, and safety and controllability, comprehensively advancing AI education in primary and secondary schools, steadily promoting AI applications, and gradually building a new form of smart education featuring human-machine collaboration, integration of virtual and physical environments, and ubiquitous accessibility, so as to comprehensively enhance the AI literacy of teachers and students.
By 2026, primary and secondary schools with suitable conditions will be supported to take the lead in offering AI courses, and a batch of high-quality exemplary application cases will be developed. By 2028, more than 60% of primary and secondary schools will be able to effectively carry out AI education, with exemplary applications covering areas such as teaching, learning, management, evaluation, and research. By 2030, AI education will be fully universalized across all primary and secondary schools in the province.
The guideline points out the need to comprehensively advance AI education. A curriculum outline for AI education in Henan's primary and secondary schools will be formulated, with layered advancement by school stage: lower grades in primary school will focus on perception and cognition, upper grades in primary school and junior high school will focus on understanding and application, and senior high school will focus on project-based inquiry and frontier technologies. During the compulsory education stage, grades 1-2 will integrate AI with various subjects, grades 3-8 will incorporate it into information technology courses, and grade 9 will offer it as a school-based course. During the regular senior high school stage, it will be incorporated into the compulsory information technology course, ensuring no fewer than 10 class hours per academic year.
Efforts will be made to vigorously promote task-based, project-based, and problem-based learning, and to build a teaching and research work mechanism featuring provincial-level coordination, city-county linkage, and school-based implementation. The application of the national smart education public service platform system will be deepened, and high-quality resources will be aggregated and shared through the Henan Primary and Secondary School Smart Education Platform to create AI education resources that integrate Central Plains characteristics. Primary and secondary schools will be supported in establishing AI-themed clubs, regularly holding campus science and technology festivals, and conducting AI study tours through multiple channels to stimulate students' enthusiasm for scientific and technological innovation.
The guideline emphasizes the need to steadily carry out AI applications. AI will be promoted for deep integration into educational scenarios such as personalized learning and interactive inquiry, with pilot advancement of intelligent learning companion applications. Full-subject AI teaching assistants will be popularized to achieve human-machine collaborative lesson preparation, advance intelligent grading, question answering, and tutoring, and promote teaching tailored to individual aptitude. Relying on digital technologies such as big data and AI, an intelligent decision-making and risk warning system will be built to drive the transformation of educational governance from experience-driven to data-empowered and data-intelligence-driven. Applications such as intelligent question design, intelligent test paper assembly, and intelligent scoring will be promoted, and a scientific, standardized, and data-empowered comprehensive quality evaluation system for students will be gradually established. It is strictly prohibited to alienate intelligent technology into a tool for exam-oriented drilling, to use AI to replace students in completing homework tasks, and to increase teachers' teaching burden and students' academic burden.
The guideline requires systematically consolidating the support foundation. The iterative upgrading of campus network infrastructure will be advanced, the deployment of intelligent teaching terminals will be accelerated, and AI education laboratories will be included as key content in the construction of smart campuses and digital campuses. Resources such as AI laboratories and science popularization exhibition halls at universities, research institutes, and technology enterprises will be promoted to open and share in an orderly manner with primary and secondary schools. An AI education zone will be launched on the Henan Primary and Secondary School Smart Education Platform, and dedicated intelligent agents for the education sector will be deployed. A teacher guarantee mechanism combining full-time and part-time staff with diversified supplements will be improved, and AI will be included as a compulsory content in teacher training at all levels and types to comprehensively enhance teachers' AI literacy.
The guideline finally emphasizes the need to establish a work advancement mechanism led by education departments with multi-department coordinated linkage, and to build an AI education expert think tank and an enterprise resource support database. A diversified funding guarantee mechanism will be improved to enhance the efficiency of fund allocation and use. The safety bottom line will be firmly secured, and a full-chain safety prevention and control system covering data, content, technology, algorithms, and models will be built to ensure the safety and trustworthiness of technology applications.
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