IIT Madras’ Bodhan AI to help train 1 million school teachers in AI literacy by 2027

The government has launched a nationwide programme to train over 1 million school teachers in AI literacy. In a significant step to transform school education, IIT Madras’s Bodhan AI will train teachers in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for everyday teaching by 2027.

The launch of the “AI Literacy for Teachers” programme was announced by the Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan at the IIT Madras Technology summit, held at Bharat Mandapam.

The initiative is designed by Bodhan AI, which is a centre of excellence in AI for education, incubated by IIT Madras, to “reimagine how teaching is delivered in classrooms, positioning AI not as an add-on tool, but as a core teacher assistant embedded across lesson planning, content creation, assessments, and student feedback systems,” according to an official statement.

"AI literacy will improve learning outcomes of school students'

Explaining about the new teachers’ programme in AI literacy, Pradhan said: “Initiatives like the AI Literacy Program for Teachers will integrate AI into everyday classroom teaching. We are not merely introducing technology, we are empowering our teachers to become architects of a future-ready India. Training one million teachers is more than a milestone of scale: it is the foundation of a responsible, ethical, and India-centric AI ecosystem in education, firmly aligned with Honourable PM Shri Narendra Modi’s vision of Viksit Bharat.”

V Kamakoti, director, IIT Madras, stated: “As AI begins to reshape education, building AI literacy among teachers becomes foundational to ensuring meaningful adoption. This initiative demonstrates how AI can be integrated into everyday teaching practices enabling teachers to enhance pedagogy, improve efficiency, and deliver better learning outcomes at scale. We are proud to be a part of this great initiative.”

The programme will address everyday challenges in education, from teacher workload to classroom diversity.

The AI literacy for teachers’ initiative will enable educators to use AI for routine and “high-effort” tasks such as lesson planning, worksheet generation, multilingual content delivery, and evaluation.

Therefore, it will reduce extra workload of teachers, enhance consistency and quality of teaching materials, and enable “more personalized and data-driven learning experiences,” the press release said.

Bodhan AI to start AI literacy in govt schools from September 5

The AI programme will use a structured AI-integrated teaching workflow, ensuring scalable adoption across central, state, and government-supported schools.

The initiative will be implemented in phases, including pre-pilots and pilot projects. The launch of the first public cohort will be held on September 5.

“This is not incremental improvement, it is a national transformation in foundational and AI-enabled learning, built on evidence and designed for hockey stick growth.

Aligned with the broader Bharat EduAI stack vision of Bodhan AI, the program focuses on capabilities, including AI-driven lesson planning and content generation, automated assessment (including handwritten evaluation), multilingual translation and communication tools, AI-assisted administrative workflows, and student-facing AI tutors for guided learning,” according to the press release.

The Union Ministry of Education is working closely with Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas, state governments and Bodhan’s partner ecosystem to assess the success rate of the initiative, it added.