Kerala becomes first Indian state to make robotics education compulsory in schools

Kerala has become the first state in India to make robotics education mandatory for all Class 10 students, marking a major milestone in the integration of advanced technology into school curricula.

From the upcoming academic year, more than 430,000 students across the state will begin learning robotics as part of an upgraded Information and Communication Technology (ICT) textbook, which features a dedicated chapter titled “The World of Robots.”

The curriculum includes hands-on experiments that will teach students how to design circuits, use sensors and actuators, and control electronic devices through computer programming.

The move builds on the earlier success of introducing artificial intelligence (AI) learning in Class 7.

This year, AI education has also been extended to ICT textbooks for Classes 8, 9, and 10.

“KITE will arrange training for teachers solely in robotics in July and will also make provisions to provide more robotic kits, including to unaided schools following the state syllabus that require them,” said K Anvar Sadath, CEO of Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) and chairman of the ICT Textbook Committee.

He added that training for 9,924 teachers on the new Class 10 ICT textbook has already been completed.

General Education Minister V Sivankutty had earlier announced that 29,000 robotic kits had been distributed to high schools across Kerala.

Each kit includes essential components like Arduino breadboards, IR sensors, servo motors, and jumper wires.

As part of the curriculum, students will start with projects such as building an automatic hand sanitizer dispenser that detects hand movement.

They will then move on to more complex tasks, including creating AI-powered smart doors capable of facial recognition using the ‘Face Detection Built-in Model’ on the Pictoblocks software platform.

The ICT textbook is being published in Malayalam, English, Tamil, and Kannada, ensuring accessibility across linguistic groups in the state.

The initiative aims to equip students with practical problem-solving skills and prepare them for a technology-driven future.