“AI + Education” Action Plan (China Ministry of Education)

“AI + Education” Action Plan This Plan is formulated in accordance with the strategic arrangements of the Outline of the Plan for the Construction of China into an Education Powerhouse (2024–2035) and the requirements of the Opinions of the State Council on Deepening the Implementation of the “Artificial Intelligence+” Initiative. I. Overall Requirements Guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, we will thoroughly implement the spirit of the 20th Party Congress and all plenums of the 20th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee, as well as the Nationwide Education Conference; fully implement the Party’s directives on education; fulfill the fundamental task of cultivating moral people (立德树人); deeply implement the national education digitalization strategy; persist in taking educating people as the foundation, viewing competence as the priority, being oriented toward applications, and in artificial intelligence (AI) for good (智能向善); fully leverage the role of AI as an engine empowering educational transformation; promote the integration of intelligent technologies with all elements of education, their interconnection throughout the entire process, and their coverage of all scenarios; coordinate the advancement of AI talent cultivation and application innovation; advance the building of the foundational environment and innovation ecosystem in a coordinated manner; accelerate the construction of a new form of smart education characterized by human-computer coordination, integration of the virtual and the real, and ubiquitous accessibility (泛在可及); promote unity between education at scale (规模教育) and individualized cultivation, knowledge transmission and ability cultivation, and technology application and humanistic care; and focus on cultivating high-quality talent capable of succeeding in the intelligence age, so as to provide strong momentum for accelerating the construction of China into an education powerhouse and providing education that satisfies the people.

By 2030, a pattern of deep integration between AI and education will have basically taken shape; an AI education system covering all stages of schooling and a general education system for all of society will have been established, with vertical continuity and horizontal connectivity; the scale and quality of AI talent cultivation will have significantly improved; and a long-term mechanism for cultivating AI literacy among all people will have been formed. Education and teaching models, scientific research paradigms, and governance models will have undergone systemic transformation; the capacity and modernization level of educational service provision will have been greatly enhanced; the foundational support environment will be more intensive and efficient; the innovation ecosystem will be more open and collaborative; applications of intelligent technologies will be more inclusive, safe, and efficient; a number of high-value, promotable, and replicable application scenarios will have been formed; the new form of smart education will have basically taken shape; and its global influence will rank among the best in the world.

II. Promoting AI Talent Cultivation and AI Literacy Improvement (1) Accelerate the popularization of AI education for primary and secondary school students. The Guide to Artificial Intelligence General Education in Primary and Secondary Schools shall be continuously improved, and AI-related courses shall be offered fully, in sufficient quantity, and with high quality. The full inclusion of AI education in local curricula systems shall be promoted; localities shall be guided in developing AI curriculum guidelines, and course objectives, content, and class-hour (课 时) requirements for each stage of schooling shall be clarified. Interdisciplinary teaching of AI shall be encouraged, and the integration of AI education into afterschool services, research-based practical activities (研学实践), and other such stages shall be promoted. Science and technology (S&T) education shall be combined with humanities education, emphasis shall be placed on enlightening students and sharpening their minds, and students shall be guided to understand intelligent technologies scientifically and use them appropriately, so as to improve students’ AI literacy, stimulate their curiosity, cultivate innovative thinking, and improve their ability to engage in cognitive thinking and solve complex problems. Primary and secondary school AI education bases shall be strengthened, and rural schools and schools in remote areas shall be supported in making good use of national platforms to offer AI courses effectively.

(2) Cultivate high-level talent for the intelligence age. Efforts shall be made to make AI a public foundational course in institutions of higher education. Course materials shall be compiled by discipline and major, and all students shall be encouraged to master AI knowledge. In accordance with the characteristics of AI technologies, “short, practical, and new” cutting-edge innovation courses shall be created. Talent cultivation plans for traditional disciplines and majors shall be optimized. Institutions of higher education shall be guided in offering interdisciplinary and integrated AI courses, interdisciplinary and cross-major course clusters shall be enriched, and hybrid (复合型) interdisciplinary talents shall be cultivated. The setup of disciplines and majors shall be optimized and adjusted in accordance with the intelligent upgrading of the industrial structure, and a number of disciplines and majors suited to new technologies, new industries, and new business formats (新业态) shall be newly established. The strengths of high-level research universities, leading S&T enterprises, national laboratories, and other entities shall be integrated. Interdisciplinary integration, industry-education integration, and S&T-education mixing shall be deepened, and new models for cultivating top-notch innovative AI talent shall be explored. (3) Promote the upgrading and transformation of traditional majors in vocational education. The structural impact of AI on vocational education shall be assessed in a timely manner. Requirements for cultivating skilled talent shall be adjusted and optimized, the intelligentized (智能化) upgrading of traditional majors shall be promoted, “AI+” major systems, curriculum systems, and teaching systems shall be scientifically designed, and the alignment of major offerings with industrial development shall be improved. In alignment with national AI industry development needs, and based on cultivating emerging industries and future industries, a cluster cultivation plan for highly skilled talent in the AI field shall be implemented. Talent cultivation plans shall be formulated jointly with industry enterprises, curriculum systems shall be updated, internship, practical training, and practice bases shall be jointly built, and highly skilled talent for emerging positions shall be cultivated in a targeted manner.

(4) Promote AI general education throughout society. The digital resources of the national platform shall be continuously enriched, AI general education resources shall be pooled and developed, and institutions of higher education and enterprises shall be encouraged to develop specialized AI resources with distinctive features and make them available to teachers, students, and those among the general public who wish to learn. AI shall be incorporated into the “Double Thousand” Program for improving the employability of students in institutions of higher education, and the offering of relevant micro-major courses and microcredential programs shall be encouraged to support high-quality employment. The role of institutions of higher education and the Open University system shall be leveraged. AI literacy and skills courses shall be custom-developed for key groups, individualized post-hiring training services shall be provided, and the inclusion of relevant learning outcomes in school credit banks (学分银行) shall be promoted. The layout of majors as well as talent cultivation plans for continuing education for academic credentials shall be optimized and adjusted, and the establishment of AI-related majors in self-study examinations shall be supported. (5) Improve the AI literacy and skills of teachers. Standards for teachers’ AI literacy shall be formulated, and the AI literacy capabilities that teachers should possess shall be clarified. AI literacy training shall be carried out in a hierarchical and categorized (分层分类) manner according to the needs of different positions, and full coverage shall be achieved through multiple means. Contextualized assessment systems shall be constructed, intelligentized and tiered assessment tools shall be developed, and localities and schools shall be encouraged to conduct large-scale assessments of teachers’ competency and to improve teachers’ competency and capabilities in a targeted manner based on the assessment results. Reform of teacher education programs shall be promoted. Knowledge of AI and other cutting-edge technologies shall be incorporated into curriculum systems, and knowledge systems shall be updated. AI shall be incorporated into teacher qualification examinations and certification content, and smart education projects shall be established among national and provincial teaching achievement awards, so as to stimulate the endogenous impetus for AI innovation. III. Promoting the Deep and Broad Integration of AI and Education

(6) Use AI to empower student learning. Based on promoting the all-round development of moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, and labor education (德智体美劳), intelligent learning companions shall be researched and developed. Ideological and political education large models shall be researched and developed, intelligent ideological and political education applications shall be enriched, and an immersive ideological and political education model shall be established that is multidimensional, all-domain, full-workforce, and available at all times. Student digital records shall be established, and learning pathways shall be dynamically optimized based on students’ abilities, characteristics, and interests, so as to better meet diversified learning needs. Effective pathways shall be explored for AI to empower physical education, aesthetic education, labor education, S&T education, and other areas, so as to support students’ individualized growth. The application of intelligent technologies in the central and western regions and in rural schools shall be promoted, so as to help students engage in independent learning, promote the standard spoken and written Chinese language, and promote high-quality and balanced education. Intelligent assistive devices shall be developed and applied to support monitoring, assessment, and rehabilitation training for students receiving special education, and to promote inclusive education. (7) Use AI to empower teachers' instruction. The application of intelligent teaching systems shall be strengthened throughout the entire process of education and teaching before, during, and after class, so as to reduce burdens on teachers and improve efficiency. Support shall be provided for teachers’ pre-class lesson preparation. Teachers shall be assisted in conducting learning situation analysis, and support shall be provided for the automatic generation of multimodal teaching resources, plan optimization, and teaching process simulation, so as to realize lesson preparation through human-computer co-creation. Human-computer coordinated teaching models shall be explored. Intelligent systems shall be used to participate in teaching processes, highly interactive virtual simulation experiments shall be developed, immersive experiences and individualized evaluation feedback shall be enhanced, and the quality and effectiveness of classroom education shall be improved. Teachers shall be assisted in assignment management, and intelligent grading, question answering, and tutoring shall be promoted. Intelligent technologies shall be used to analyze classroom teaching behavior, evidence-based AI teaching research practices shall be carried out, and teacher professional development models suited to the intelligence age shall be constructed, so as to help teachers improve teaching quality.

(8) Use AI to empower education governance. An intelligent education brain (教育智能大脑) shall be created around convenient services, precise management, and scientific decision-making. A national big data platform for matching talent supply and demand shall be built, and talent demand surveys, predictive analysis, and evaluation feedback shall be carried out. Intelligent technologies shall be used to scientifically predict population changes and industrial development trends, and mechanisms for overall resource coordination and allocation and the adjustment of disciplines and majors shall be improved. Applications such as intelligent essay topic generation, intelligent exam creation, intelligent proctoring, and intelligent grading shall be promoted. Intelligent tools for educational evaluation shall be developed, and efforts shall be made to explore vertical evaluation of the entire process of student learning and horizontal evaluation across all elements of moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, and labor education. An intelligentized employment service system shall be created to realize intelligent job recommendations for university students and promote highquality and full employment for graduates of institutions of higher education. Massive multimodal monitoring data shall be analyzed efficiently, campus safety risk real-time early warning and emergency response capabilities shall be enhanced, and the development of safe campuses shall be supported. (9) Use AI to empower scientific research. In the areas of natural sciences, engineering sciences, and philosophy and social sciences, efforts shall be made to explore the construction and promotion of intelligent agents for science and intelligent tools through approaches such as challenge-based competitions, so as to help researchers discover and summarize patterns (规律) and solve complex problems. AI interdisciplinary innovation platforms shall be built, AI-driven multidisciplinary integrated development shall be strengthened, the boundaries of knowledge shall be expanded, and exploration of new paradigms for scientific research in the intelligence age shall be accelerated. The intelligent upgrading of basic scientific research platforms and S&T infrastructure shall be promoted, intelligent laboratories and autonomous experimental clusters shall be built, and automated design of experimental plans, performance of experimental operations, and analysis of experimental data shall be realized, so as to improve the efficiency of scientific research and innovation. Application of the intelligent agent "Kejiaohui" (“科交汇”) on the [China] Higher Education Science and Technology Achievement Trading Platform shall be deepened, intelligent sensing of enterprise needs and intelligent matching of converted (转化) achievements shall be realized, and new quality productive forces (新质生产力) shall be cultivated.

IV. Strengthening the Foundational Environment for “AI + Education” (10) Lay the groundwork for intensive and efficient smart education. A national education intelligent computing power ("compute") service platform shall be built to effectively pool AI innovation resources such as compute, data, models, and tools. The China Education and Research Network (CERNET) shall be fully leveraged to connect national compute training grounds, national compute hubs, enterprises, and institutions of higher education, and to integrate intelligent compute, general compute, and supercomputing resources from all parties. Provincial-level education administrative departments shall be encouraged to use the national integrated compute network (全国一体化算力网) to provide compute support for AI applications. Focusing on areas such as ideological and political education, scientific discipline knowledge, and scientific research, the development of national basic corpora shall be organized, and localities and institutions of higher education shall be encouraged to develop field-specific datasets with distinctive features. The National Education Big Data Center (国家教育大数据中心) shall be strengthened, a cross-departmental, crossregional, and cross-platform data network shall be established, and mechanisms for dynamic data updates based on platforms, journals, terminal devices, and other sources shall be explored. The state shall carry out organized research and development efforts, develop AI education large models for different stages of education, and strengthen capabilities such as value alignment, logical reasoning, security, and ethics, so as to provide support for applications by localities and institutions of higher education and effectively avoid resource waste and low-level redundant development. 11) Cultivate a co-created and shared intelligent application system. The intelligent upgrading of national platforms shall be advanced in depth, enabling personalized resource recommendations, intelligent service processing, and intelligent data analysis. A collaborative and connected mechanism between institutions of higher education and primary and secondary schools shall be established to jointly develop AI courses and AI applications. The National Artificial Intelligence (Education) Application Demonstration Base (国家人工智能（教育）应用中试基地) shall be laid out and built to provide public products such as maps of students’ knowledge, abilities, and competencies, to lower the threshold for application innovation, to cultivate an application service system, and to accelerate the implementation of intelligent products and services. AI learning communities shall be built to pool open-source courses, provide innovation resources, carry out achievement certification, encourage teachers and students to participate in the development of the open-source ecosystem, realize joint corpus building, joint model testing, and joint application creation, and continuously cultivate high-quality educational intelligent applications. An intelligent application capability assessment system shall be established, educational intelligent agents oriented toward different educational roles and different application scenarios shall be selected, and the best shall be launched on the national platforms. AI pilot application scenario projects shall be organized, and a number of high-value benchmark applications shall be created.

(12) Create future education spaces integrating the virtual and the real. Future classrooms, future schools, future learning centers, and future practical training centers shall be created, so as to open up the “last mile” (“最后一公里”) of AI applications. Teaching and practical capability centers shall be laid out in key disciplines and fields, high-quality interdisciplinary AI courses and practical projects shall be created, and support shall be given to the intelligent upgrading of disciplines. Pilot development of digital teaching materials shall be carried out, a new generation of smart massive open online courses (MOOCs) shall be launched, development of virtual simulation experiments shall be deepened, formats of digital education resources shall be enriched, immersive teaching spaces shall be constructed, and new human-computer coordinated teaching models shall be built. The application of smart terminal devices shall be promoted, student user profiles shall be constructed through big data analysis, and learning resources that take students as the center (以学生为中心) shall be configured, so as to support personalized learning in education at scale. Education large models and intelligent agent tools shall be integrated, a number of thematic learning scenarios shall be created, project-based, inquiry-based, and scenario-based education shall be promoted, and students shall be guided in learning how to think and in developing capabilities for the intelligence age.

V. Optimizing the Development Ecosystem for “AI + Education” (13) Carry out research and innovation for “AI + Education.” The interdisciplinary integration of AI with cognitive science, brain science, psychology, education, and other fields shall be promoted, educational research paradigms shall be innovated, and understanding of the laws of education (教育规律), cognitive development, and other matters shall be deepened. AI social experiments shall be carried out on an ongoing basis, AI ethics research shall be deepened, and the impact of technology on education shall be scientifically assessed. A technological innovation system for “AI + Education” shall be constructed, joint research platforms and education practice research bases shall be strengthened, research on general purpose key technologies shall be organized, and institutions of higher education, enterprises, and research institutes shall be encouraged to participate in the development of the “AI + Education” ecosystem. Long-term capital, patient capital, and strategic capital—both state-owned and from the private sector (社会)—shall be guided to invest in educational S&T innovation, and more advanced technologies shall be promoted in serving human development. (14) Strengthen support conditions for “AI + Education.” Systems for AI education and training, application innovation, technology R&D, safety and security assurance, and other areas shall be strengthened, and an education policy system suited to the development requirements of AI shall be constructed. Education institutions, enterprises, and research work units (单位) shall be encouraged to develop a number of standards and norms focusing on AI applications in the education sector, large model evaluation, data security, and other areas. Talent cadre building models shall be innovated, talent from institutions of higher education and enterprises shall be introduced to participate in development and construction, and a composite (复合型), high-level engineering and technical team shall be cultivated. Support and encouragement shall be provided for innovating input models through methods such as purchasing services, and a diversified input mechanism shall be constructed that is led by the government and involves the joint participation of institutions of higher education, society, and enterprises.

(15) Promote international cooperation on “AI + Education.” International conferences such as the World Digital Education Conference, the Global MOOC and Online Education Conference, and the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education shall continue to be held. The Artificial Intelligence Open Alliance (人工智能开放联盟), the World Digital Education Alliance, and the Global MOOC and Online Education Alliance shall be strengthened, and a series of flagship platforms for international exchange shall be created. The role of bilateral and multilateral mechanisms shall be fully leveraged, education-related international cooperation shall be advanced by country and by region, multilingual AI courses, education large models, and intelligent agents shall be shared, and mutual learning from high-quality education resources and experience shall be strengthened. China shall actively participate in global education governance, rely on platforms of important international organizations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), deeply participate in the formulation of international agendas, rules, and standards in the field of AI education, and continuously enhance the international influence of China’s digital education. (16) Strengthen the security barrier for “AI + Education.” A security protection system for AI education applications shall be established, and security protection standards shall be determined in a categorized and graded (分类分级) manner. The establishment of a security review mechanism for education large models shall be deepened, so as to ensure that generated content is positive, healthy, and oriented toward social good (向上向善). Security assessment standards for AI education applications shall be established, the security of model algorithms, data resources, infrastructure, application systems, and so on shall be assured in an integrated manner, and it shall be ensured that technology applications conform to the laws of education. Switching from pirated to genuine versions of software shall be promoted, and the security, trustworthiness, and controllability of AI applications shall be assured. Management of the introduction of AI into campuses shall be strengthened, and application norms for intelligent products and terminal devices shall be clarified. AI assessment and filing, technical monitoring, risk early warning, and emergency response mechanisms shall be improved, so as to effectively prevent problems such as the use of AI to commit forgery and fraud, academic misconduct, exam-oriented "rat races," and leakage of private information.

VI. Organization of Implementation The Party’s leadership shall be upheld throughout the entire process of “AI + Education,” and organizational leadership, overall planning, guidance and supervision, and support conditions shall be strengthened. Education departments shall be responsible for formulating action plans and coordinating the advancement of implementation. Development and reform departments shall strengthen overall coordination and support the establishment of projects that meet requirements. S&T departments shall be responsible for strengthening the layout of scientific research in key fields. Industry and information technology departments and data management departments shall be responsible for providing policy support, promoting opensourcing, and sharing, as well as data interconnection and interoperability. Localities and schools shall incorporate “AI + Education” into their development plans, formulate implementation plans suited to their own actual circumstances, and actively carry out application demonstrations. The development of think tanks and consulting institutions shall be strengthened, as shall policy and strategy research, front-line work guidance, and offering of suggestions and advice. Specialized training shall be organized to improve the AI leadership of management cadres. Pilot programs for AI-enabled education initiatives shall be deeply implemented, a normalized data-based application supervision mechanism shall be constructed, and outstanding experiences and practices shall be summarized and propagandized in a timely manner.