City schools to introduce AI, skill courses in classes 6 to 8

Indore: Taking the Skill India renaissance to the elmentary level, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) schools in city are now gearing up to introduce skill subjects like artificial intelligence, coding, augmented reality, data science, financial literacy and many more for students of classes 6 to 8.This move comes as an initiative to assimilate National Education Policy 2020 recommendations to make children future ready. Based on the recommendation, the CBSE has now introduced future oriented courses for classes 6 to 8.“NEP recommends that beginning with vocational exposure at an early age in the middle and secondary schools, quality vocational education will be integrated smoothly into higher education. It will ensure that every child learns at least one vocation and is exposed to several more,” reads a CBSE circular. Last year, the board had introduced AI as an optional skill subject for Class IX which rapidly gained popularity among the students.“We welcome the board’s decision to introduce these skill subjects for the elementary classes. These subjects will help children to be prepared for the future. Many other countries have introduced these subjects for students years back. As per the NEP reforms, we will introduce these skills to our students also and we have started planning for the same,” said Indore Sahodaya School Complex newly appointed chairperson Isabel Swamy.While looking at the interest of students in these skill subjects, many schools in the city had introduced initial training for the elementary classes last year.“CBSE has asked the schools to introduce these subjects for classes 6 to 8 recently. However students in my schools were already learning and practising coding, robotics, data science, financial literacy and AI from last year. We also have ATAL tinkering lab for our students providing them options in these courses,” said a city-based CBSE school principal Dr Archana Sharma. The educationists from the city feel that such skill based subjects have brought drastic change in students and enhanced their problem solving and logical reasoning skills. “AI is a sought after course as it is a high scoring subject. Topics like coding, python, robotics were introduced to the children a few years ago. Children have developed better problem solving and reasoning skills. Students are performing outstanding at national level robotics competitions also defeating IIT students. Workshops and training sessions will be conducted for teachers for elementary classes,” said another CBSE school principal Siddharth Singh.With a view to create an awareness about modalities for introducing these skill modules in schools and also to familiarize them with the contents of the modules, CBSE has scheduled a series of webinars beginning from May 1 onwards.
Stay updated with the latest news on Times of India. Don't miss daily games like Crossword, Sudoku, and Mini Crossword.