NCERT releases AI module for Classes 9 to 12; deepfakes, ethical usage in focus

From recognising the use of AI in everyday applications and understanding how machines learn from examples to detecting deepfakes, ethical boundaries protecting personal data and refining prompts, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has released an activity-based 20-hour introductory module on computational thinking (CT) and artificial intelligence (AI) for Classes 9 to 12.

Developed by faculty members from IIT Madras, IIT Jodhpur, and NCERT, the module seeks to help students understand how AI works, assess its limitations, and become careful, confident, creative, and responsible users and evaluators of AI systems, rather than relying on its outputs without verification.

Aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the introductory module –a foundational learning resource – is designed for students with no prior knowledge of AI.

“The module encourages students to become informed, confident, and responsible users of technology, while reinforcing that human judgement, creativity, and ethical responsibility remain central to learning,” NCERT said in a press release on Friday.

The module is organised into five units covering AI in everyday life; how machines learn; why AI gets things wrong; data privacy and responsible use of AI; and the use of modern AI tools. Its approach places practical exercises, discussions and reflection ahead of memorising technical definitions. Students are also expected to maintain a “Curious Notebook”, a running portfolio that records observations, reasoning, and reflections after various activities across five units.

“This is not a module to be memorised. It is a set of habits to be practised,” reads the textbook's Letter to the Students from the module development team.

What is in the module? A breakdown

The first unit asks students to identify AI systems they encounter in an ordinary day, from smartphone keyboards that predict words to applications that recommend music.

The unit opens by connecting complex technological concepts to innate human abilities. It starts with an everyday example: “You walk into the school canteen and spot your friend across a crowd of fifty people in less than a second”. The module notes that “Pattern recognition is something you do constantly, often without noticing”—from predicting which queue will move faster to identifying a song from three notes. It explains that AI systems are designed to perform these same pattern-recognition tasks, but unlike humans, “they almost never have the context you have”.

The second explains how machines learn patterns from examples, using activities such as training an image classifier to distinguish everyday objects and then deliberately trying to make it fail. The exercise is intended to show how the quality and range of training data affect a system’s performance.

The third unit, “When AI Gets It Wrong”, addresses the risks of treating confident-sounding answers as necessarily accurate. Students examine AI-generated misinformation, deepfakes and hallucinations, and develop a five-step method to verify information before relying on or sharing it.

The fourth unit examines personal data, consent, fairness and digital safety, introducing students to India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023. The module also asks students to scrutinise the privacy policies of apps they use, considering what information is collected, with whom it may be shared and how long it may be retained.

It cautions them against entering sensitive information, including Aadhaar or PAN numbers, passwords, one-time passwords and personal documents, into AI tools.

The final unit focuses on prompting AI tools and using them as helpers rather than substitutes for independent thinking. Students develop and refine prompts for tasks relevant to them, assess the responses and record what they had to correct. The module describes the preferred approach as a “helper-stance”, in which students do the thinking and use the tool to improve their work.

The suggested teaching plan spans 20 classroom hours. Activities are offered in three modes: using a device for each student or pair; teacher-led demonstrations on a shared screen; and “unplugged” exercises using paper and discussion. The latter allows schools with limited devices or internet connectivity to undertake the core activities. The module’s teacher guidance encourages classroom discussion and experimentation, including learning from mistakes, rather than relying solely on lectures.

Move welcomed

Principals of CBSE-affiliated schools where NCERT textbooks and modules are mandatory from Class 9 onwards, welcomed the new AI module.

Praneet Mungali, trustee at the Sanskriti Group of Schools in Pune, said introducing AI education in Class 9 was a significant step towards preparing learners for a technology-driven world.

“Early learning provides a firm foundation of skills like critical thinking, creativity, logical reasoning, and problem-solving,” he said, adding that students needed to understand where AI tools could be used and what their limitations were.

Dr Jyoti Arora, principal of Mount Abu Public School in Delhi, said the module would strengthen critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving while promoting responsible use of technology.

"It would help students become “future-ready global citizens who use AI as a tool for innovation, guided by human judgement and values”, she said.

In the foreword, Prof. Dinesh Prasad Saklani, director of NCERT, stated that “technology can extend human capability, but judgement, creativity, responsibility, and ownership of learning remain with the learner”.

Earlier, on April 2, CBSE launched a structured curriculum on CT and AI for Classes 3 to 8, aimed at building AI readiness among students from an early age. The curriculum recommends 50 hours annually for Classes 3 to 5 and 100 hours for Classes 6 to 8, ensuring a gradual, age-appropriate progression toward the phased integration of CT and AI concepts into school education.