OpenAI's Education for Countries enters its next phase - Singapore joins in!
Hey everyone, it's Shii-chan! Today's story is about AI reaching classrooms all over the world. The effort to bring AI into education country by country just moved to its next stage. So exciting!
OpenAI News
openai.com
What was announced?
OpenAI's News shared the "next phase" of Education for Countries, a country-scale education program launched at Davos earlier this year. Its first cohort - Estonia, Greece, Italy (CRUI), Slovakia, Trinidad & Tobago, Kazakhstan, the UAE, and Jordan - is now joined by a new member: Singapore.
More than 900 million people use ChatGPT every week and more than 4 million use Codex, and this program is about getting that power into students' learning in a responsible way.
Why it matters
We still don't fully understand how AI shapes cognition, learning, and long-term development. So OpenAI treats these rollouts as government-led research partnerships: tailoring AI to educational contexts, working closely with educators, and building an evidence base for safe and effective use - instead of just shipping tools and hoping for the best.
What changes
Participating countries advance across three pillars:
- Research-driven deployment: using OpenAI's Learning Outcomes Measurement Suite to measure AI's impact on learners as deployments roll out.
- Localized AI tools for learning: system-wide access to secure, private ChatGPT, Codex, and OpenAI's API platform, tailored to teaching and learning.
- Teacher training and enablement: AI literacy, professional development, and certifications so educators can use these tools with confidence.
The theme is designing with teachers, not around them.
Dive Deep
The first cohort is already showing concrete numbers:
- Estonia: led by the AI Leap Foundation and the Ministry of Education, ChatGPT Edu now reaches over 20,000 students and 4,600 teachers. OpenAI is working with AI Leap, the University of Tartu, and Stanford to study the impact on more than 20,000 students, with findings to be shared publicly. At the recent Presidential Codex Hackathon, over 150 participants formed about 30 teams and built classroom tools like a Maths Feedback Coach and an AI STEM Tutor.
- Jordan: over 1 million students and over 100,000 teachers use the Siraj AI Education Assistant.
- Greece: the OpenAI for Greece accelerator picked 21 AI-native startups from 240 applications.
- Kazakhstan: a national ChatGPT Edu rollout across all 20 regions saw over 84,000 educators finish AI-readiness training; 9 in 10 said it's useful for work, and 44,000 active educators sent 1.5 million prompts in the first month.
- Slovakia: more than 9 in 10 university educators reported higher productivity, saving around 5 hours per week. A Ministry of Education team used Workspace Agents to cut a months-long revision of teacher professional standards down to hours.
For newcomer Singapore, around 43% of ChatGPT usage by 18-24 year olds is tied to learning and education. Through OpenAI for Singapore, OpenAI is working with the Ministry of Education (MOE) and GovTech on things like more interactive mother-tongue language learning, plus workshops through a Singapore chapter of the OpenAI Academy and Codex for Teachers hackathons.
OpenAI will also soon launch the first phase of OpenAI Luminaries, a new educator engagement track for co-designing with teachers and sharing classroom resources and teacher-led examples across countries.
Wrap-up
- OpenAI's Education for Countries enters its next phase, adding Singapore to the first cohort of eight.
- Three pillars: research-driven deployment, localized AI tools, and teacher training.
- Early signals are real - Estonia's 20,000-student rollout, Kazakhstan's 1.5 million prompts, and Slovakia's roughly 5 hours saved per week.
- A new OpenAI Luminaries track is coming, and the next cohort will be announced later this year - you can reach out to apply.
If you work in education policy or EdTech, or you're curious how AI-powered learning will roll out in your country, this one's for you!
