Introduction

The Central Committee of the Communist Party and the State Council place great importance on the profound impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on education. General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized the need to deeply implement the national education digitalization strategy, strengthen the national smart education public service platform, explore effective ways to empower personalized and innovative teaching through digital means, expand the benefits of high-quality educational resources, and leverage AI to facilitate educational transformation. In April 2026, the Ministry of Education and four other departments jointly issued the “AI + Education Action Plan,” providing a historic opportunity for the balanced development of quality education empowered by AI in ethnic regions.

Focus on Unique Needs: Deepening AI Empowerment in All Aspects of Education

Students in ethnic regions have unique cognitive foundations, language environments, and learning habits, leading to significant differences in learning conditions. It is crucial to integrate AI into the entire educational process and empower all aspects of education to accurately respond to the personalized and differentiated needs of teachers and students. In terms of value guidance, it is important to effectively utilize ideological models and scenario-based intelligent applications to embed core content such as the education of the awareness of the Chinese national community, the inheritance and development of excellent traditional Chinese culture, and the promotion of the national common language into immersive intelligent educational products, making abstract theories tangible. By combining red resources with cases of national unity and progress, a specialized ideological education resource library can be built to align knowledge literacy with value shaping, constructing a shared spiritual home for the Chinese nation.

In terms of precise assistance in learning, intelligent learning companions equipped with contextual guidance and cultural adaptation functions can be used to accurately capture students’ cognitive characteristics through technologies such as knowledge graphs and emotional computing, monitoring knowledge consolidation points and weaknesses in real-time, and creating personalized, progressive learning paths to implement large-scale personalized teaching. For students learning the national common language, features such as voice assessment, intelligent pronunciation correction, and engaging dialogues can enhance language skills. In teaching empowerment, intelligent teaching systems can create a closed-loop process of precise lesson preparation before class, dynamic optimization during class, and evidence-based research after class. Before class, intelligent recommendations can optimize teaching resources for efficient lesson preparation; during class, real-time monitoring of learning conditions allows for flexible adjustments to teaching strategies; after class, in-depth analysis of teaching behaviors drives reflection and improvement. This closed-loop significantly enhances classroom quality and effectiveness, especially providing strong teaching support for schools with weak faculty.

Enhancing Adaptability: Promoting Full-Chain Optimization of Educational Resources Empowered by AI

The construction of educational resources in ethnic regions has shifted from merely increasing quantity to enhancing effectiveness, focusing on breaking through the conversion chain from supply to application to improve the adaptability of resources to teaching scenarios. In terms of resource supply, digital resources that are specialized, localized, and multimodal should be developed around the key educational needs of ethnic regions. Localities are encouraged to build regional educational corpora, utilizing the national smart education platform for content adaptation, localization of cases, and dynamic updates to achieve precise matching of educational resources with teaching scenarios. In resource allocation, priority should be given to deploying high-speed networks and edge computing nodes in border pastoral areas, national border schools, remote teaching points, and boarding schools to solidify the foundation for resource circulation. By relying on provincial-level intelligent bases to break down data barriers across platforms, resource integration and scheduling can be strengthened to ensure that quality resources are accessible, operational, and comprehensive. An intelligent channel for paired support of educational resources between eastern and western regions should be established to facilitate the targeted delivery and localization of quality resources. In resource application, the national smart education platform should establish a dynamic monitoring and feedback mechanism for resource operation and usage, conducting layered analysis based on teacher application data, resource usage preferences, and student engagement, while continuously optimizing intelligent recommendation and push strategies to enhance the effectiveness of resource application in teaching scenarios. To address the practical difficulties faced by some teachers who are hesitant to use digital resources, expert guidance teams should conduct case promotions and on-site guidance to ensure that quality resources are truly understandable, usable, and effective.

Focusing on Skill Enhancement: Strengthening Support for Teachers Empowered by AI

Teachers are the primary resource for high-quality educational development. Enhancing the quality of education in ethnic regions hinges on improving teachers’ intelligent literacy and teaching competence. In terms of training systems, differentiated training should be implemented, with key teachers focusing on the development and application of intelligent teaching tools, young teachers strengthening data-driven learning analysis and precise teaching, and other teachers emphasizing foundational applications and concept updates. Strengthening county-level “smart education master studios” can play a demonstrative role, encouraging young teachers to lead older ones, promoting a shift from “knowing how to use” to “willing to use and good at using”. An integrated online and offline training platform should be established, combining school-based cases for practical exercises, promoting the “National Training Program” to provide precise support for the construction of the teacher workforce in ethnic regions, and incorporating AI into the curriculum of teacher training colleges in these areas to solidify the foundation of the workforce from the source.

In terms of research and training mechanisms, an intelligent platform for the professional development of teachers in ethnic regions should be constructed, generating personalized training suggestions through the analysis of teachers’ classroom teaching behavior data to form an integrated model of “teaching, learning, research, and evaluation”. Support should be provided for the establishment of networked research communities across schools and regions to gradually narrow the gap in regional training. Regular workshops on AI teaching applications, teaching competitions, and other activities should be organized, with award-winning lesson examples promoted through the national smart education platform. In terms of incentive evaluation, intelligent literacy and teaching application effectiveness should be included in the teacher assessment and evaluation system, with special incentives and project funding established for teachers who excel in AI education, ensuring they receive preferential treatment in title evaluations and awards, thereby fostering a positive atmosphere of “promoting learning through use and encouraging excellence through evaluation”.

Promoting Continuity Across All Education Stages: Building an AI-Empowered Talent Development System in Ethnic Regions

The cultivation of AI literacy needs to permeate the entire talent development process, establishing a vertically integrated and horizontally connected education system for AI across all stages and a general education system for society. In terms of vertical integration, a “General Education Guide for AI in Primary and Secondary Schools” suitable for the realities of ethnic regions can be established in the basic education stage, setting gradient goals by educational stage and stimulating students’ AI literacy through project-based learning and gamified courses. In higher education, AI should be promoted as a public foundational course in universities in ethnic regions, facilitating the interdisciplinary integration of AI with specialized advantageous disciplines. In vocational education, traditional programs should be upgraded with AI, and order-based training should be conducted. Promoting integrated cultivation across all educational levels, digital student records should be effectively utilized to provide personalized learning path planning. AI should be incorporated into lifelong learning systems to create a ubiquitous learning environment that combines online and offline elements.

In terms of horizontal connectivity, the mechanism for collaborative education among families, schools, and communities should be deepened, extending AI literacy education to family enlightenment and community spaces. General AI courses for parents should be developed, expanding coverage through community learning centers and senior universities. Ethnic region universities should open quality educational resources to society, promoting deep integration of education among schools, families, and communities. Collaborative education between industry, academia, and research should be promoted, focusing on the needs of local industries such as smart agriculture and cultural tourism in ethnic regions, establishing AI industry-education integration training bases, and supporting leading enterprises to co-build industry colleges with local institutions, relying on industry-education integration models to create a “industry-job-course” map, effectively aligning talent development with industrial growth.

Strengthening All-Factor Coordination: Promoting Systemic Reform in Educational Governance Empowered by AI

The modernization level of educational governance in ethnic regions directly affects the overall effectiveness of AI empowerment in education. It is necessary to focus on strengthening policy coordination, resource adaptation, and condition guarantees, while emphasizing the construction of intelligent hubs, monitoring and early warning systems, and collaborative safety guarantees. In terms of intelligent hub construction, relying on the National Education Big Data Center, an intelligent regional education brain should be built that integrates data aggregation, decision support, policy push, and demand response. A cross-departmental and cross-level data sharing mechanism should be established to achieve precise policy transmission and timely feedback collection, enhancing the responsiveness and execution effectiveness of educational policies in ethnic regions. Regions with conditions should be supported to take the lead in trials, with intelligent data collection terminals prioritized for deployment in boarding schools and central schools in towns, exploring a smart service model of “one screen overview, one network handling”.

In monitoring and early warning, big data intelligent monitoring technology should be utilized to dynamically perceive risks such as ideological safety, campus safety, and school dropout rates, constructing a multidimensional early warning indicator system covering teaching quality, teacher mobility, resource allocation, and student development, establishing an intelligent early warning and closed-loop feedback system for early detection, prevention, and assistance, providing scientific basis for precise governance. In terms of safety guarantees, adhering to the principle of “intelligence for good,” it is essential to ensure the security of content, data, and algorithms, improving assessment filing, technical monitoring, risk warning, and emergency response mechanisms, strengthening the security protection of educational data throughout its lifecycle, effectively preventing issues such as algorithm discrimination, privacy breaches, and exam-oriented education, ensuring that AI applications operate within a regulated, trustworthy, and benevolent framework.

Empowering education in ethnic regions with AI is a long-term systematic project that requires a unified national approach. Only by adhering to a problem-oriented approach and prioritizing application can we promote the coordinated efforts of technology, resources, talent, and governance through innovative practices, implementing precise policies and sustained efforts, transforming AI into the “key variable” for the quality and balanced development of education in ethnic regions, and laying a solid foundation for building a strong education nation and promoting national unity and progress.