Introduction

The central government and the State Council attach great importance to the profound impact of artificial intelligence on education. General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out the need to implement the national education digital strategy, strengthen the national smart education public service platform, explore effective ways to empower personalized and innovative teaching through digital means, expand the benefits of quality educational resources, and utilize artificial intelligence to facilitate educational reform. In April 2026, the Ministry of Education and four other departments jointly issued the “Artificial Intelligence + Education Action Plan,” providing a historic opportunity for quality and balanced development of education in ethnic regions.

Focusing on Unique Needs

In ethnic regions, students have distinct cognitive foundations, language environments, and learning habits, leading to significant differences in learning conditions. It is crucial to integrate artificial intelligence into the entire educational process, empowering all aspects of education to respond more precisely to the personalized and differentiated needs of teachers and students. In terms of value guidance, it is essential to develop and utilize ideological models and scenario-based intelligent applications that incorporate core content such as education on the awareness of the Chinese national community, the inheritance and development of excellent traditional Chinese culture, and the promotion of the national common language. These should be integrated into immersive intelligent educational products to make abstract theories tangible.

In personalized learning support, intelligent learning companions equipped with contextual guidance and cultural adaptation functions can accurately capture students’ cognitive characteristics using technologies like knowledge graphs and emotional computing. This enables real-time monitoring of knowledge consolidation and weaknesses, allowing for tailored and progressive learning paths. For students learning the national common language, features such as voice assessment, intelligent pronunciation correction, and engaging dialogues can enhance language skills.

In teaching empowerment, intelligent teaching systems can create a closed-loop process of precise lesson preparation before class, dynamic optimization during class, and evidence-based research after class. Before class, intelligent recommendations can optimize teaching resources for efficient lesson preparation; during class, real-time awareness of student dynamics allows for flexible adjustments in teaching strategies; after class, in-depth analysis of teaching behaviors drives reflection and improvement. This closed loop significantly enhances classroom quality, especially for schools with weak teaching resources.

Enhancing Resource Adaptability

The construction of educational resources in ethnic regions has shifted from merely supplementing quantity to enhancing effectiveness, focusing on breaking through the transformation chain from supply to application to improve the adaptability of resources to teaching scenarios. In terms of resource supply, it is essential to develop specialized, localized, and multimodal digital resources that address the key educational needs of ethnic regions. Localities are encouraged to build regional educational corpora, utilizing the national smart education platform for content adaptation, local case transformation, and dynamic updates to achieve precise matching of educational resources with teaching scenarios.

For resource allocation, priority should be given to deploying high-speed networks and edge computing nodes in border pastoral areas, national border schools, remote teaching points, and boarding schools to strengthen the foundation for resource circulation. Leveraging provincial-level intelligent bases to break down data barriers across platforms will enhance resource integration and scheduling, ensuring that quality resources are accessible and operational across all areas. An intelligent channel for targeted support of educational resources between eastern and western regions should be established to facilitate the localized adaptation and delivery of quality resources.

In resource application, the national smart education platform should establish a dynamic monitoring and feedback mechanism for resource operation and usage. This should involve layered analysis based on teacher application data, resource usage preferences, and student engagement, taking into account differences in educational stages, subjects, and regional characteristics to continuously optimize intelligent recommendation and delivery strategies, enhancing the effectiveness of resource application in teaching scenarios. For some teachers facing difficulties in utilizing digital resources, expert guidance teams should conduct case promotions and on-site support to ensure that quality resources are understandable, usable, and effective.

Strengthening Teacher Support

Teachers are the primary resource for high-quality educational development. Enhancing the quality of education in ethnic regions hinges on improving teachers’ intelligent literacy and teaching competence. In terms of training systems, differentiated training should be implemented, focusing on intelligent teaching tool development for backbone teachers, data-driven learning analysis and precise teaching for young teachers, and foundational application and concept updates for other teachers. Strengthening county-level “smart education teacher studios” can play a demonstrative role, encouraging young teachers to mentor older colleagues and promoting a shift from “knowing how to use” to “willing to use and proficient in using”.

An integrated online and offline training platform should be established, combining school-based case studies for practical exercises, promoting the “National Training Program” to provide precise support for the construction of the teaching workforce in ethnic regions, and incorporating artificial intelligence into the curriculum of normal universities in these areas to strengthen the foundational workforce from the source.

In terms of research mechanisms, an intelligent platform for professional development of teachers in ethnic regions should be constructed, generating personalized training recommendations through analysis of teachers’ classroom teaching behavior data to create an integrated model of “teaching, learning, research, and evaluation”. Support for cross-school and cross-regional network training communities should gradually narrow regional training gaps. Regular workshops and teaching competitions on artificial intelligence applications should be organized, with award-winning lessons promoted through the national smart education platform.

In terms of incentives and evaluations, intelligent literacy and teaching application effectiveness should be included in the teacher assessment system, with special incentives and project funding for teachers who excel in artificial intelligence education and teaching, ensuring they receive favorable treatment in title evaluations and awards, creating a positive atmosphere of “promoting learning through use and promoting excellence through evaluation”.

Building a Comprehensive Talent Development System

The cultivation of artificial intelligence literacy needs to permeate the entire talent development process, constructing a vertically integrated and horizontally connected education system for artificial intelligence across all educational stages and a general education system for society. In terms of vertical integration, a “General Education Guide for Artificial Intelligence in Primary and Secondary Schools” should be established, tailored to the realities of ethnic regions, with gradient goals set by educational stage, stimulating students’ intelligent literacy through project-based learning and gamified courses. In higher education, artificial intelligence should be promoted as a public foundational course in colleges and universities in ethnic regions, facilitating the interdisciplinary integration of artificial intelligence with specialized advantageous disciplines. In vocational education, traditional specialties should be upgraded through intelligentization, with order-based training implemented. A comprehensive cultivation model integrating all educational levels from preschool to higher education should be promoted, utilizing student digital files to provide personalized learning path planning. Artificial intelligence should be incorporated into lifelong learning systems, creating a ubiquitous learning environment that combines online and offline resources.

In terms of horizontal integration, the collaborative education mechanism among families, schools, and communities should be deepened, extending artificial intelligence literacy education to family enlightenment and community spaces. General courses on artificial intelligence targeting parents should be developed, expanding coverage through community learning centers and elderly universities. Quality educational resources from colleges and universities in ethnic regions should be made accessible to society, promoting deep integration of education among schools, families, and communities. Collaborative education among industry, academia, and research should be promoted, focusing on local industry needs such as smart agriculture and characteristic cultural tourism in ethnic regions, establishing practical training bases for artificial intelligence integrated with education, and supporting leading enterprises to co-build industry colleges with ethnic region institutions, relying on integrated models to create a “industry-position-course” map to effectively connect talent cultivation with industrial development.

Promoting Systemic Reform in Education Governance

The modernization level of education governance in ethnic regions directly affects the overall effectiveness of artificial intelligence in education. It is necessary to strengthen policy collaboration, resource adaptation, and condition guarantees, while emphasizing the construction of intelligent central systems, monitoring and early warning, and collaborative safety guarantees. In terms of intelligent central system construction, relying on the national education big data center, a regional education intelligent brain should be built that integrates data aggregation, decision support, policy push, and demand response. A cross-departmental and cross-level data sharing mechanism should be established to ensure precise transmission of policies and timely feedback on execution, enhancing the responsiveness and effectiveness of educational policies in ethnic regions. Regions with suitable conditions should be supported to take the lead, with intelligent data collection terminals prioritized for deployment in boarding schools and central schools in towns, exploring a smart service model of “one screen overview, one network for all services”.

In monitoring and early warning, big data intelligent monitoring technologies should be utilized to dynamically perceive risks and hidden dangers related to ideological safety, campus safety, and school dropouts, constructing a multidimensional early warning indicator system covering teaching quality, teacher mobility, resource allocation, and student development. An intelligent early warning and closed-loop feedback system should be established to achieve early detection, prevention, and assistance for risks, providing scientific basis for precise governance. In terms of safety guarantees, the principle of “intelligence for good” should be upheld, ensuring the safety of content, data, and algorithms, improving evaluation and filing, technical monitoring, risk warning, and emergency response mechanisms, and strengthening the security protection of educational data throughout its lifecycle to effectively prevent issues such as algorithm discrimination, privacy leakage, and exam-oriented education, ensuring that the application of artificial intelligence always operates within a regulated, trustworthy, and benevolent framework.

Empowering education in ethnic regions with artificial intelligence is a long-term systematic project that requires coordinated efforts nationwide. Only by adhering to a problem-oriented approach and prioritizing applications, while promoting the collaborative efforts of technology, resources, talent, and governance through innovative practices, can we transform artificial intelligence, a “key variable,” into the “largest increment” for the quality and balanced development of education in ethnic regions, laying a solid foundation for building a strong educational nation and promoting national unity and progress.