Digital Iran Boosts AI Education: Free Courses for 2 Million, Girls Lead Record Student Contests
Iran extends student AI drive through next summer, with free training for over two million and year-round support. 33,000+ joined contests in 398 cities with strong female turnout.
Iran extends AI education initiative with year-round competitions and free student training
Iran's Vice President for Science, Hossein Afshin, announced that student AI education and related competitions will continue through next summer, with ongoing support for top participants. The initiative sits under the "Digital Iran" plan and is built to bring practical AI skills to students at scale.
Afshin said, "We are at the beginning… this is only a starting point, and the path of supporting AI education will continue." The program offers free AI training to more than two million students, with lessons delivered through games and activities that make complex ideas accessible and useful.
Key figures for educators
- Registrations: 440,000+ students; teacher network: 20,000+ educators.
- National AI Competition participation: 33,043 students from 398 cities and 653 educational districts.
- Gender breakdown: 20,218 girls and 12,822 boys participated.
- Grade levels: 6,658 primary students and 26,382 secondary students.
- Teacher training: a dedicated platform is active; Sharif University of Technology is supporting teacher preparation.
- Timeline: the initiative continues until next summer, with year-round support for standout students.
Why this matters for schools
The program centers on creative learning: students explore AI through games, projects, and competitions-then turn ideas into working solutions. This approach rewards curiosity, collaboration, and iteration, which aligns well with inquiry-based and competency-based models.
The National AI Competition set a new scale record in Iran for a student contest, with broad geographic reach and strong female participation. Provinces with the highest participation included Tehran, Khuzestan, Khorasan Razavi, Fars, and Hormozgan.
Action steps for school leaders and teachers
- Build a weekly AI lab: short, game-based challenges that teach fundamentals (logic, pattern recognition, simple classifiers).
- Run school-level "mini comps" to prepare students for national rounds; rotate roles (coder, tester, presenter) to include all skill levels.
- Leverage the teacher training platform and coordinate peer workshops; invite local university partners for mentoring sessions.
- Track inclusion: monitor participation across grades and genders; set targets to bring more primary students and girls into advanced tracks.
- Align projects with subjects: data storytelling in math, ethics debates in social studies, and prompt-writing in language arts.
- Publish a simple AI calendar: term dates, prep sprints, qualification rounds, and reflection weeks after competitions.
Classroom ideas that work in short sprints
- Prompt-writing clinics: teach clarity, constraints, and iteration; compare outputs and discuss why certain prompts perform better.
- Low-code activities: block-based logic, flowcharts, and simple decision trees before moving to Python or notebooks.
- Responsible AI modules: data bias, privacy, and model limits using real classroom examples and short case studies.
- Project pitch to prototype: students define a problem, outline data and steps, then demo a working draft in two weeks.
Scale and context
Afshin described the initiative as the largest programming and AI competition by scope, spread, and prize value in Iran and the region. For context, the Computer Student Olympiad has around 7,000 registrants, the Mathematics Student Olympiad about 14,000, the programming section of the Khwarizmi Youth Festival about 4,000, and the programming section of the Khwarizmi Young Adults Festival fewer than 1,000 participants.
Helpful resources
Bottom line: make AI practice routine, visible, and collaborative. Use competitions as milestones, not the finish line-what students learn between events is what compounds.
