The UAE makes AI a required school subject, reception through grade 12

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, has announced that artificial intelligence will be taught as a subject at every stage of UAE government education, from reception through grade 12, beginning next academic year. The curriculum is built in three cycles that escalate deliberately: in the first, pupils compare machines to humans and develop digital thinking; in the second, they design their own AI systems and study bias and algorithms; in the third, they learn command engineering against simulated real-world scenarios aimed at higher education and work. Data, algorithms, applications, risks and the ethics of use are all named as leading facets of the policy, not appended as a disclaimer. Delivery sits inside the existing Computing, Creative Design and Innovation subject, taught by designated teachers, with the Ministry of Education supplying guides, activities, models and adaptable lesson plans. The institutional point is the boring part: a curriculum specification, a teacher cohort trained to deliver it, and lesson materials that reach every classroom rather than the well-funded ones. Most jurisdictions are still debating whether to permit AI in schools; this is a decision to teach the thing itself, in sequence, as a literacy. Whether it works will be visible in about a decade, in whether UAE graduates build systems or only operate them.

This is a QeRN summary by Ahmed Qerni. Read the original at The National: https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/uae/2026/09/02/sheikh-mohammed-bin-rashid-announces-ai-curriculum-for-all-schools-in-uae/.