Schools lean on AI platforms to deliver progress

A quiet transformation is underway in classrooms worldwide as artificial intelligence moves from the fringes to the center of educational practice. Across India, the United Kingdom, and Southeast Asia, schools are adopting AI-powered platforms not as futuristic experiments, but as practical tools to deliver what parents, teachers, and administrators have. This shift raises profound questions about the role of technology in education—and whether AI can finally break the mold of the "one-size-fits-all" classroom.

The New Digital Backbone of Schools- In Chennai, schools are turning to mobile and web-based AI-powered platforms like My Class board and Never skip to streamline communication and track student performance. These enterprise resource planning tools handle everything from homework notifications and fee collection to transport updates and report cards. For parents like R Vidya, whose son attends Class IX at Possible spelling mistake found. Bodhi Campus, the change is palpable: she no longer waits for her son to share updates about tests or assignments. The app delivers direct notifications about performance, including detailed assessments of strengths and weaknesses. The appeal extends beyond convenience. School administrators say these platforms replace chaotic WhatsApp groups with secure, one-to-one communication. J Sunday, principal of Bala Vida Manner, noted that his school pays approximately ₹400 per student annually for a platform covering 1,600 students, with customizable features tailored to the school's needs. For parents like Beena, whose son's school lacks such a platform, the absence is felt keenly: "School group chats are chaotic, with several unwanted messages," she said, contrasting it with the streamlined dashboard her son previously used at Chennai Public School.

Moving Beyond Communication to Personalized Learning- While communication platforms represent the entry point, more sophisticated AI tools are reshaping how students learn and how teachers teach. The shift is perhaps most visible in mathematics education, where AI has demonstrated remarkable effectiveness in improving outcomes at scale. In Rajasthan's Took district, a 2024 intervention demonstrated what focused AI implementation can achieve. Faced with persistent mathematics failure—despite nearly 90% of Class 10 students aspiring to science careers, less than 12% actually made it to science streams—district authorities launched Possible spelling mistake found., a bilingual AI-powered personalized learning platform. The results were dramatic: within six weeks, the Class 10 mathematics pass rate soared to 96.4%, a three-percentage-point improvement over the previous year, with gains concentrated not just in minimum pass rates but in high-performance categories.

 The platform functioned as a tireless learning companion, instantly solving textbook problems in Hindi or English, generating unlimited practice questions of varying difficulty, and creating personalized learning paths for each student. Teachers, free from preparing worksheets, could focus on guiding individual students. The model combined AI-powered personalized learning with continuous performance tracking and smart classroom integration, offering a scalable blueprint for other districts. Similar innovations are emerging elsewhere. In Liverpool, a pilot involving 4,000 primary school pupils using Century AI reported improved grades over the last academic year. The software automates marking, lesson planning, and data gathering, enabling teachers to "focus on building human relationships with students". The scheme was rolled out across more than 100 primary schools, collectively serving over 28,000 students.

The Teacher's New Role: Facilitator, Not Replaced- A consistent theme across successful AI implementations is that technology amplifies rather than replaces teachers. Research from a qualitative case study in a private secondary school in Bengaluru found that AI facilitated adaptive learning and differentiated instruction while shifting teachers' roles from content deliverers to learning facilitators. Teachers reported finding this empowering, though sometimes challenging due to limited professional development. Dr. Ranjitsinh Disale, the 2020 Global Teacher Prize winner, embodies this vision. Working in rural Maharashtra, Disable developed "Hack the Classroom," an AI-powered learning companion that operates entirely in Marathi—the language of over 80 million people. The platform generates personalized assignments for every student, reads handwritten Marathi answers with 95% accuracy, evaluates responses in under 45 seconds, and creates tailored learning plans based on each student's performance and learning gaps. In a pilot with 225 students across 12 rural schools, teachers reported a 40% reduction in grading time, and 92% of students said they felt clearer and more confident about their next steps. As Disale noted, the goal is not to replace teachers but to restore their time and sharpen thoughtful insight: "Hack the Classroom empowers educators to teach with empathy, nuance, and joy". Challenges and Ethical Considerations. The Bengaluru case study identified barriers including inconsistent access to digital devices, unreliable internet connectivity, and concerns over student data privacy. The study also highlighted anxiety among some students when faced with continuous feedback or algorithm-driven performance tracking. Ethical concerns loom large. A report from the Brookings Institution found that risks of using AI in education currently "overshadow" the benefits, particularly regarding AI's impact on cognitive development as students "off-load" mental tasks.

India's National Education Policy 2020 calls for integrating AI and computational thinking across all levels of schooling, with the Central Board of Secondary Education introducing AI as an elective at the secondary level. The 2025-26 Union Budget allocated ₹500 crore for a Centre of Excellence in AI for Education, and AI and Computational Thinking will become compulsory from Class 3 starting in the 2026-27 academic year. However, as education policy expert Naman Jain cautioned, without deliberate planning, "there is a real risk that AI's benefits will accrue mainly to well-resourced urban schools, rather than bridging the gap for rural and marginalised learners".

The Path Forward- Success factors include keeping teachers in the lead, designing for local languages and contexts, protecting student privacy, and starting with offline-capable tools that work even without reliable internet. As the Gates Foundation's education team observed, "The choice is not between 'doing more of the same' in classrooms and a leap into the unknown. We already know what moves the needle in reading and numeracy.AI offers a practical pathway to ease the everyday bottlenecks that hold back effective teaching, enabling proven approaches to literacy and numeracy to reach more classrooms and endure over time. Whether India—and other nations embracing this technology—can scale these successes while avoiding the pitfalls of over-reliance, inequity, and privacy erosion will determine whether AI becomes a genuine educational revolution or another unfulfilled promise. The evidence so far suggests cautious optimism. AI can deliver progress, but only when schools, teachers, and communities remain firmly in the driver's seat.