E-School — Kurdistan Regional Government's AI-Enabled Smart Classroom Rollout

On 13 January 2026, at the opening of the 'E-School' project in Erbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq Minister of Education Alan Hama Saeed announced a joint Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Kurdistan Foundation initiative to bring AI-enabled digital infrastructure to public schools across the region.

Forty public schools have already switched to fully electronic instruction, and the programme plans to activate 1,000 solar-powered smart classrooms during 2026, linked through a single online network for lessons, testing and administration that the KRG says will connect nearly two million students and teachers; AI tools are being integrated into teaching and student activities as part of the rollout.

The same day, the ministry launched Phase 3 of its companion 'My School' digital curriculum platform, financially sponsored by the Kurdistan Foundation with earlier phases supported by UNICEF, extending standardised digital lessons from grades 1–6 to grades 7–9 and covering the region's full compulsory basic-education cycle.

As of the announcement, no independent evaluation of learning outcomes, data-protection safeguards for the AI components, or teacher-training provisions has been published; the programme is documented here as an early-stage, ministry-led infrastructure rollout rather than a proven pedagogical intervention.

Read the full analysis: https://shafaq.com/en/Kurdistan/Iraqi-Kurdistan-rolls-out-digital-schooling-with-1-000-smart-classrooms