Connect children meaningfully to AI transformation: Gov
Garhwal Post Bureau
Dehradun, 17th Apr: Sampark Foundation in collaboration with Education Department of Uttarakhand today convened the ‘AI for Education Impact’ Uttarakhand State Action Dialogue at Fairfield by Marriott, Dehradun. The event was inaugurated by Governor Lt General Gurmit Singh (Retd) and featured a welcome address by Ravinath Raman, Secretary, Education, Uttarakhand.
It brought together senior state leaders including Ravi Shankar Singh, Chief Technical Officer- ITDA and Head, State e-Governance Mission Team, Dr Amit Kumar Mishra, Scientist F, National Informatics Centre, academica as well as academic institutions such as IIT Roorkee, IIM Kashipur, NIC, UTU, Doon University, DIT universities among others. The dialogue also included practitioners working at scale in government schools, and AI and policy experts.
Governor Gurmit Singh said, “Education is the foundation of an equitable society, and it is important that we strengthen it with thoughtful innovation. As artificial intelligence becomes integral to how we learn and work, it is essential that children are meaningfully connected to this transformation. When introduced with care, AI can help build more responsive education systems preparing students for the future.”
“As we strengthen foundational literacy and numeracy, we must adopt approaches that are practical and scalable and designed around teacher and student needs. Technology that supports structured content delivery and generates insights that guide better planning and decision-making can improve classroom processes,” commented Secretary Ravinath Raman.
Marking 20 years of Sampark Foundation’s pioneering work in technology-enabled education and driven by a personal connection to the state – both founders, Anupama and Vineet Nayar, hail from Uttarakhand – the foundation is also expanding its efforts to transform learning, including with the foundation’s significant Rs 36 Crore investment in Uttarakhand alone. In the state, Sampark Foundation has already reached 13 Lakh children and trained over 90,000 teachers across 16,000 government schools. It has established 4,300 smart classrooms in the region, and plans to create 5,000 more to enhance teaching and learning experiences.
Vineet Nayar, Founder and Chairman, Sampark Foundation commented, “When used thoughtfully, AI can support teachers by simplifying preparation and enabling more personalised learning in the classroom. As we continue to deepen our partnerships with states such as Uttarakhand, our focus remains on creating classrooms where curiosity thrives and learning outcomes improve in a meaningful and sustained way. Twenty years ago, we began with the conviction that every child in a government school deserves the same quality of learning as a child in the best private school. Technology should help us move closer to that goal, not complicate it.”
Deepti Singh, State Project Director, Uttarakhand, added, “The real value of AI lies in the ease of use at the school level to connect classroom insights with system-level decision-making.
The event addressed a very critical question: now that India has achieved over 95% primary enrolment and built school infrastructure at scale, why are so many children still leaving without the ability to read or do basic arithmetic – and can AI finally change that? Moving beyond AI hype, the dialogue focused on how learning outcomes can be meaningfully improved by supporting teachers’ skills, not replacing them. Translating national vision to state action, it featured two panel discussions on the role of AI in real-time education decision-making.
The event concluded with remarks by Dr K Rajeswara Rao, President, Sampark Foundation, who announced the launch of Sampark Foundation’s AI-based, real-time classroom monitoring and governance platform, set to be rolled out across 80,000 government schools Pan-India at no cost. The platform will allow district, block, and school-level education leaders to track teaching data, monitor classroom engagement, and generate early warning signals for lagging schools – enabling faster, evidence-based decision-making without increasing administrative burden”.
Sampark Foundation was founded by Anupama Nayar and Vineet Nayar, both proud natives of Uttarakhand (also Former Vice Chairman and CEO of HCL Technologies and author of Harvard Business Press bestseller” Employees First, Customer Second”) with a committed investment of INR 1000 Cr with the belief that “frugal innovation” and its practical implementation in partnership with the government can drive large-scale improvement in learning outcomes.
