India just made this compulsory
From 2026-27, CBSE schools teach Computational Thinking and AI from Class 3. What that means for parents.
CBSE Circular Acad-15/2026, dated 1 April 2026, makes Computational Thinking and AI compulsory for Classes 3 to 8 from the 2026-27 session. [link to the circular on cbseacademic.nic.in] For Classes 6 to 8, the subject carries 100 hours a year.
Tamil Nadu is moving in the same direction. The state plans its TN-ARIVU curriculum, with AI, from 2027-28. [link to the Tamil Nadu announcement]
What changes for your child
If your child is in a CBSE school, AI is now part of their timetable from Class 3. A hundred hours a year in Classes 6 to 8 is a real amount of time. How useful those hours are will depend on what happens in them.
Questions worth asking the school
- How much of the time is spent using AI, and how much learning about it? Both have value. Knowing how a model works is different from knowing how to get good work out of one.
- Do children check what the AI produces? The risk with any AI in a classroom is that children learn to accept the first answer. Ask how lessons teach them to catch mistakes.
- Is it in a language my child thinks in? A child who has to translate their idea before saying it is practising two skills at once.
- How many children share a computer? Directing an AI is hard to practise while watching someone else do it.
What you can do at home
You do not need to be technical. Ask your child to describe something they want to make, then ask what they left out. Ask how they would know if the result was wrong. Those two questions are the core of the subject, and they work at the dinner table.
ayyayo was built for exactly this practice: short voice lessons for children aged 9 to 13, in their own language, including Tamil and Hindi. It is not a replacement for the CBSE syllabus. It is extra practice at the part that is hardest to learn from a textbook. Schools can request a pilot, and parents can join the waitlist.