72% of surveyed Indian government-school teachers feel positive about AI

On a personal phone in a government school without a computer lab, a teacher can already use an AI tool to make a difficult lesson easier. Across Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, a national survey of 797 government-school teachers found 72% feel positive about AI, while 26% use it regularly.

The findings come from JanAI, an initiative of the Head Held High Foundation. Its report, released on September 1, arrives months before India begins introducing an AI and Computational Thinking curriculum for Classes 3 to 12 in the 2026-27 academic session. The survey focused specifically on government-school teachers rather than folding them into a broader private-and-public average.

Teachers are mostly using AI as a teaching aid. They turn to it to simplify difficult concepts, generate examples and activities, and prepare worksheets and assessments. Grading and administrative paperwork rank among the least common uses, while concerns that AI could replace teachers are nearly absent from the responses.

The harder problem is responsible use. Among teachers who said AI makes them personally more effective, 86% worried that students could become overdependent on it; across all surveyed teachers, 64% shared that concern. More than half of teachers who use AI tools said they had entered a student’s name, marks or photograph into one. Confidence about privacy, the report suggests, does not automatically produce safer behaviour.

In practice, the immediate need is not to persuade teachers that AI exists but to give them a supported path from experimentation to regular, responsible use. JanAI plans to identify, train and organise 50,000 rural government-school teachers as local AI change agents over the next 12 to 18 months, with different interventions in each state. The survey will track the same teacher population, expand to more states and publish quarterly updates; for now, its picture remains a four-state account of teacher responses, not a completed national rollout.