– Ronita Torcato 

Imagine a classroom where lesson plans are generated in minutes, grading takes half the time, and learning materials are promptly tailored to every student’s needs.

This isn’t a distant sci-fi future. It is a major development that will be unfolding in schools across Maharashtra, facilitated by a groundbreaking partnership between the state’s school education department and Google for Education, to transform teachers into AI-savvy educators.

The Master Plan for Maharashtra targets training of teachers under the ‘Google AI Educator Series’ over the next one and a half years.

To achieve this, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed between the school education department and Google for Education with the goal of equipping over four lakh teachers across the state with advanced AI and digital technology skills over the next 18 months.

Chris Phillips (vice president, Geo Maps and Google for Education) and Moin Tashildar, deputy secretary, Maharashtra school education and sports department, finalised the letter of intent for the trilingual zero-cost programme which will launch in phases.

First, a select group of “master trainers” will learn directly from Google. They will then fan out across the state, sharing that knowledge in every single school.

Training materials will be tri-lingual: To ensure grassroots adoption, content will be available in Marathi, Hindi, and English.

The training programme is being provided by Google completely free of cost. The Maharashtra government will maintain control over the process, ensuring digital security and protection of the identities of teachers.

“In the era of artificial intelligence, it is the need of the hour to equip teachers with modern skills. We are ensuring this reaches every school without any financial burden on the state.” said Dadaji Bhuse, Maharashtra’s school education minister.

It may be noted that the programme in India mirrors a major campaign in the United States, where Google for Education has teamed up with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) to provide free, comprehensive Gemini training to all six million K-12 and higher education faculty.

This represents the largest initiative of its kind in the U.S., aimed at helping educators and their students safely navigate Google’s cutting-edge AI suite — including Gemini and AI research tool, NotebookLM.

As Dr. Pankaj Bhoyar, minister of state for school education, noted, government and aided school teachers deserve access to world-class training to bridge the digital divide.

The MoU signing event was attended by principal secretary Ranjitsinh Deol, and Google for Education’s senior officer Sanjay Jain, among others.

Aligned with India’s National Education Policy goals, the project seamlessly integrates with existing

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) labs, smart classrooms, digital libraries, and language labs.

By prioritising the professional development of teachers, this initiative ensures that as the world becomes increasingly dominated by AI, the classroom will not be left behind. Instead, teachers will be leading the charge.