AI Clubs / Artificial Intelligence Student Societies — Sri Lanka's 100-school national AI-literacy pilot

On 21 August 2024, Sri Lanka's Cabinet of Ministers — acting on a joint proposal from then-President Ranil Wickremesinghe (in his capacity as Technology Minister) and Education Minister Susil Premajayantha — approved the establishment of "Artificial Intelligence Student Societies" (AI Clubs) in 100 selected schools across the country. The pilot targets students in grades 6 to 9 and is projected to reach approximately 300,000 students islandwide.

The programme is a joint undertaking of the Ministry of Technology and the Ministry of Education, delivered with private- and civil-society partners including Microsoft, AIClub, the Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies (SLASSCOM), IronOne and Boardpac. Students engage in AI-concept learning, hands-on capability-building, and creative projects exploring AI use cases; Microsoft has committed to training 100 teachers from the selected schools, with additional teacher support from AIClub and SLASSCOM. Officials have stated the intention to expand AI Clubs to all of Sri Lanka's schools if the pilot succeeds.

As of publication, the initiative remains in its early pilot phase: no independent evaluation of learning outcomes, teacher-training completion rates, or student participation has yet been published, and reporting to date documents the programme's launch and design rather than measured results. The pilot's national ambition and named corporate/civil-society partners are real and independently reported, but claims of 300,000 students "reached" describe pilot capacity rather than a confirmed enrolment or completion figure.

Read the full analysis: https://mode.gov.lk/notices/ai-clubs-in-sri-lanka-schools