Nepal Government’s focus on preparing for an AI-driven future is clearly reflected in the budget for fiscal year 2026-27. The ambition is timely, necessary, and high, with a focus on computational thinking, AI-relevant subjects, AI research fellowships, school AI-readiness assessments, and the country’s first Sovereign AI Computing Center. Countries like Singapore, Thailand, and India in Asia have already started leveraging AI in education and child development, so it is refreshing to see Nepal focus on a rapidly increasing global wave of AI as well. But the question is not whether Nepal can create and build AI infrastructure, it is whether our classrooms are preparing children to use, question, and shape that technology.
Devices, computing centers, and AI subjects are important, but they will not automatically produce creative, ethical, and capable learners. Research has shown that excessive use of technology impedes creativity and intellectual development, including impaired language and literacy, poor concentration, inability to tolerate frustration, plagiarism, and distraction from meaning. It is important for the Government to realize that more access to AI does not automatically improve learning. In rural Peru, for instance, computer access increased dramatically, from about one computer for every eight students to more than one computer per student, but there was no evidence of improvement in math or language test scores.
The government needs to recognize that Nepal’s education system still rewards memorization over thinking and understanding. A child’s success in school is still narrowed down to end-of-year examinations, correct answers, and memorization rather than curiosity, reasoning, creativity, or expression. Before the government introduces AI-relevant subjects, we must question whether children are encouraged to ask “why”, are they given space to disagree respectfully, can they connect lessons to their own lives, and do they have opportunities to write, speak, create, and collaborate. As Nepal moves toward AI in education, the government must keep three priorities at the center: enhance students’ soft skills, readiness of teachers, and leverage AI to identify gaps in the education system.
Interaction must for enhancing distance and classroom learning
Make Soft Skills Central to AI Readiness
Nepal’s education system must reframe “soft skills” as survival skills for the AI era, as soft skills are now becoming “hard” skills in a world shaped by artificial intelligence. Yet, foundational soft skills like written and verbal communication, creativity, and critical thinking are incidental in the Nepali education system. Nepal does not need to choose between AI and soft skills, it needs to build both together. Singapore, for example, has identified core skills for its students to develop to prepare them for the future. Nepal can learn from such structures to implement critical, adaptive and inventive thinking courses alongside AI-relevant subjects. Similarly, instead of spending years creating assessment structures from scratch, the Ministry of Education and Sports can study, adapt, and take inspiration from the Australian Curriculum to localize their metric of creative and critical thinking capabilities for Nepali students from Grades 1-10. Development of these soft skills will lead to AI readiness, which is beyond technical knowledge, it is also about preparing children to think, adapt, collaborate, communicate, and continue learning.
Readiness of Teachers and Equity Technology
Teachers and educators must remain central to Nepal’s AI education strategy. Before investing in AI-centered learning centers or standalone AI courses, the Government should first assess teachers’ current knowledge, exposure, confidence, and training needs around existing AI tools. Nepal can then adapt the UNESCO AI Competency Framework for Teachers as a teacher-capacity tool instead of implementing an independent exclusive AI integration. This is specially important because the UNESCO framework emphasizes on the use of locally accessible and affordable technology, including unplugged and context-sensitive technology. For Nepal, where schools have unequal access to internet, devices, and electricity, this would be especially helpful to ensure AI integration doesn’t widen the already existing gap in education. Nepal can also learn from Thailand’s national workshop on AI competencies in education by working with UNESCO Nepal to adapt and localize the resources. A practical first step would be to pilot AI integration training for teachers in schools in all seven provinces and urban, semi-urban, and rural areas to adapt need-based teacher readiness programs locally before AI integration.
Use AI to Identify Students at Risk
The dropout rate of students in secondary level education in Nepal is 73% as of 2022. Despite having a high literacy rate of 77.4%, the high dropout rate reflects the true nature of our education system. It shows that access to schooling has improved, but retention and completion remain major concerns. Students leave because of many reasons, including high cost of attendance, distance to school, lack of quality education, and generational poverty cycles. However, these reasons are not true for all of Nepal and the government has not taken much action to tackle this issue. This is where the budget allocated for AI could focus on identifying early signs of dropout in students and intervening to increase our secondary school completion rate. Morocco offers one useful example. Using real data from its Ministry of National Education, researchers developed AI models to identify students at risk of dropping out by analyzing grades, attendance, demographic information, class conditions, and school-level factors. The system leveraged AI as an early-warning tool to help policymakers understand the root causes and intervene before dropout happened. For Nepal, this can be a starting point.
Nepal is right to prepare for the AI era. However, the foundation of this era should be built in classrooms that focus on foundational soft skills, a child’s creativity & critical thinking, and well-trained teachers. If the Government of Nepal wants to most effectively and equally invest in an AI-driven future, it must first invest in the human foundations of learning in schools with stronger teachers, critical and creative skills, and equitable access for every child. Nepal should equally focus on helping students become thinkers, creators, and responsible citizens while incorporating AI in education.
The author is the Director of Canopy Nepal and a Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia honoree in Social Impact, working at the intersection of education, youth leadership, gender equity, and civic accountability.
