Hunan Sets Floor of Eight AI Class Hours a Year Starting Fall 2026
Hunan Province's Department of Education has issued a notice requiring every primary and secondary school in the province to begin teaching artificial intelligence as general education from the fall 2026 semester, with a floor of eight class hours per academic year. Schools with sufficient capacity may offer standalone AI courses.
The document, formally titled Notice on Strengthening Artificial Intelligence Education in Primary and Secondary Schools, sets out a two-stage timetable. By 2027, Hunan expects a basically complete AI curriculum system with notable progress in teaching evaluation, teacher capacity, resources and facilities, alongside a batch of replicable teaching models.
The province then aims to have built, by 2030, a learning-centred, innovation-oriented AI education ecosystem marked by full coverage, deep integration with schooling and higher-quality delivery. A parallel curriculum guide will be drafted to systematise courses, teachers, resources, laboratories, assessment and safety management.
Content is staged by cognitive development. Lower primary grades focus on perceiving and experiencing AI; upper primary and junior secondary emphasise understanding and application; senior secondary concentrates on project creation and frontier applications. AI safety and ethical norms run through every stage of schooling.
Delivery is deliberately flexible. Where a dedicated course is not viable, schools may fold AI into information technology, comprehensive practice, labour education or after-school services, and are encouraged to integrate it with subject teaching through interdisciplinary learning and large-unit instruction.
Teachers are told to use AI learning companions and intelligent teaching assistants for human-machine dialogue and personalised adaptive learning, and to experiment with dual-teacher classrooms and smart classrooms using task-, project- and problem-based methods.
Assessment moves away from a single paper test. Hunan will explore folding student AI literacy into the comprehensive quality evaluation system through work showcases, project defences and hands-on tasks, backed by electronic portfolios and learning analytics that build each student a digital portrait of growth.
On staffing, the department will form a provincial expert committee and recruit part-time lecturers into provincial and city-level AI education lecturer corps. Teachers from information technology, maths, science and engineering backgrounds will be trained on general, applied and research tracks, with preferential treatment in teaching competitions and professional title review.
The notice follows a November 2024 Ministry of Education directive on strengthening school AI education and the April 2026 AI Plus Education action plan issued by five central departments. Hunan is among the provinces turning that national mandate into binding minimum hours, delivery arrangements and supervision measures.
The document, formally titled Notice on Strengthening Artificial Intelligence Education in Primary and Secondary Schools, sets out a two-stage timetable. By 2027, Hunan expects a basically complete AI curriculum system with notable progress in teaching evaluation, teacher capacity, resources and facilities, alongside a batch of replicable teaching models.
The province then aims to have built, by 2030, a learning-centred, innovation-oriented AI education ecosystem marked by full coverage, deep integration with schooling and higher-quality delivery. A parallel curriculum guide will be drafted to systematise courses, teachers, resources, laboratories, assessment and safety management.
Content is staged by cognitive development. Lower primary grades focus on perceiving and experiencing AI; upper primary and junior secondary emphasise understanding and application; senior secondary concentrates on project creation and frontier applications. AI safety and ethical norms run through every stage of schooling.
Delivery is deliberately flexible. Where a dedicated course is not viable, schools may fold AI into information technology, comprehensive practice, labour education or after-school services, and are encouraged to integrate it with subject teaching through interdisciplinary learning and large-unit instruction.
Teachers are told to use AI learning companions and intelligent teaching assistants for human-machine dialogue and personalised adaptive learning, and to experiment with dual-teacher classrooms and smart classrooms using task-, project- and problem-based methods.
Assessment moves away from a single paper test. Hunan will explore folding student AI literacy into the comprehensive quality evaluation system through work showcases, project defences and hands-on tasks, backed by electronic portfolios and learning analytics that build each student a digital portrait of growth.
On staffing, the department will form a provincial expert committee and recruit part-time lecturers into provincial and city-level AI education lecturer corps. Teachers from information technology, maths, science and engineering backgrounds will be trained on general, applied and research tracks, with preferential treatment in teaching competitions and professional title review.
The notice follows a November 2024 Ministry of Education directive on strengthening school AI education and the April 2026 AI Plus Education action plan issued by five central departments. Hunan is among the provinces turning that national mandate into binding minimum hours, delivery arrangements and supervision measures.
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