On April 1, 2026, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan launched the new CBSE curriculum on Computational Thinking and Artificial Intelligence for students from Class 3 to Class 8. This initiative is designed to develop fundamental computational thinking skills such as logical reasoning, problem solving, and pattern recognition. It is planned to make students understand the role of artificial intelligence in daily life from the academic session 2026-2027. The Minister described this as a transformative step towards future-ready learning. He is right to be ambitious. This is a welcome move.
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But ambition without order is just an announcement.
The basics we’re skipping
There is a four-letter acronym that is the foundation of all meaningful learning. LSRW (Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing). These are not soft skills. These are the cognitive infrastructures that allow students to process information, develop understanding, and communicate thinking. All subjects are based on this foundation. So are computational thinking and AI.
The new CT curriculum makes this dependency clear. The curriculum document states that the CT learning standards are designed as foundational competencies that will be integrated into lower-level mathematics, science, language, and social science. CT is not a separate subject next to language. It is designed to be communicated through language. Resource books for classes 3-5 consist of additional questions and activities embedded in existing textbook chapters. Every puzzle, every pattern exercise, every decomposition task is done through text, and the child has to read, interpret, and respond in writing to the text.
Learning outcomes for classes 3 to 5 include solving puzzles and everyday life problems using visual representations, interpreting texts, and analyzing given information. The word interpreter plays an important role here. Assessments at this stage include written exams including CT questions and puzzles, group activities, and teacher observation diaries. We expect children to be able to understand and follow written or verbal instructions, even in group activities.
So the CT curriculum for classes 3-5 is essentially a means of reading and writing. A child who cannot read at grade level cannot experience it as a thought exercise. They will experience it as a barrier to reading.
What the data tells us
This is not a hypothetical concern. We have data, but it’s a sobering feeling.
The Education Annual Report 2024 published by Pratham examines children in rural India. Discovery is direct. More than half of the children in class 5 in government schools cannot read texts at class 2 level. ASER’s reading assignments have remained unchanged since 2006. Can a child read a simple story written for a 7-year-old? Even after five years of schooling, more than half of Class 5 children fail to clear that hurdle.
Some may think this is a problem with rural public schools. CBSE’s mostly urban and civilian voters are segregated. That assumption is wrong.
PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024 is a national assessment unique to the Ministry of Education. It targeted 2.3 million students in approximately 88,000 schools, including public schools, support schools, and private schools. This finding was counterintuitive. At the third-grade level, urban and suburban students attending private schools performed worse than their rural peers. State school students achieved high scores in both language and mathematics. Students stepping into CBSE classrooms this year are not immune to this crisis. They are in the middle of it.
promises and deadlines
The government is not unaware of the literacy gap. In 2021, the Ministry of Education launched ‘NIPUN Bharat: National Initiative for Improving Reading Comprehension and Numeracy’. The mission was clear. Every child in this country should master basic reading, writing, and arithmetic by the end of third grade. Target year: 2026-27.
The target year is this year. In the same year, the CT curriculum will be launched. ASER 2024 represents the latest picture of the current situation. Reading levels have improved since 2022, which is encouraging. However, more than half of the children in class 5 are still unable to read texts at class 2 level. NIPUN Bharat mission is incomplete as of latest data available. The CT curriculum was launched in years when basic literacy goals were believed to have been achieved. The gap between promise and reality is a risk worth considering carefully.
What the curriculum assumes
The aims of the CT curriculum itself state that it aims to develop cognitive skills such as logical thinking, critical thinking, and analytical reasoning. These are legitimate and important goals. But those are downstream capabilities. They rely on understanding as a prerequisite. Children who cannot understand texts that present reasoning tasks cannot develop abstract reasoning.
Think about what class 6 requires of a child. At this stage, the CT assessment moves into project presentations, reflective journals, and written assignments. Teachers are expected to create rubrics to evaluate student performance. This is also where the concept of AI is introduced for the first time. A child who spends classes 3 to 5 struggling to read CT resource books will reach class 6 without the foundation of computational thinking that was supposed to be built that year. Pipelines break silently, but quickly. We discover failures in class 6 in the same way that we discover reading and writing failures through ASER. It’s through after-the-fact data on kids who deserve better.
The curriculum document also states that from class 6 onwards, assessment will focus on project presentations, reflective journals and assigned tasks. Each of these requires a level of written and verbal clarity built on years of strong LSRW practice. Without that practice, assessments end up testing deficiencies in literacy rather than computational thinking skills.
unfulfilled parallel
There’s a pattern here worth naming. LSRW has always been a stated priority in the Indian primary school framework. The National Education Policy 2020 states that basic literacy and numeracy skills are a top priority. NIPUN Bharat was launched to put that commitment into practice. However, the data shows that the mission is incomplete. CT now risks following the same trajectory. In short, it’s well designed, truly ambitious, and built on foundations that haven’t yet been secured.
CT is now positioned as a new priority. The curriculum is well designed. The intent is genuine. The committee that developed this program includes serious academics from IIT Madras University, Azim Premji University, and other institutions. The step-by-step approach, activity-based pedagogy, and ethical framework for AI are all thoughtful.
But if LSRW is a top priority but cannot be delivered at scale, what is different about CT? The same children who fall into the LSRW gap also fall into the CT gap. The same data will tell the same story years from now. Unless the prerequisite is treated as a prerequisite.
ordering questions
Countries that have introduced AI at the school level, such as Finland, Singapore, and South Korea, have one thing in common: high basic literacy rates. Curriculum reform followed literacy education. It wasn’t there before.
India has the institutional momentum to get this right. NIPUN Bharat is delivering results. ASER 2024 will see improvements in reading levels even if the job is not yet completed. We need to intentionally carry that momentum into our CT deployments. The question is not whether India should teach computational thinking and AI in schools. They should, and this curriculum is a meaningful step. The question is whether the children sitting in Class 3 classrooms this year are ready to benefit from it.
The strength of the curriculum is determined by the development of the children it reaches. The child is now sitting in the 3rd grade class 3 classroom. There is a CT worksheet in front of them and a reading area below it. Ignoring one and dealing with the other is not transformational.
(Aasif Iqbal J. is an author, educator, and former COO of iamneo Edutech Private Limited. He has worked in the technology and education sector for 15 years, working with students from school children to corporate L&D leaders. All opinions expressed here are personal.)
