China Releases General AI Textbooks for Four School Stages and a 'Ten Lectures, One Hundred Questions' Series, Filling a Public Curriculum Resource Gap

At the basic-education parallel session of the 2026 World Digital Education Conference on May 12, China released General Artificial Intelligence Education Textbooks and the 'Ten Lectures and One Hundred Questions on General Artificial Intelligence Education' course series. The textbooks comprise four volumes for lower primary, upper primary, middle school, and high school.

Lower-primary materials center on picture books and sensory experiences; upper-primary students begin tackling simple problems; middle-school materials explain technical concepts; and high-school materials move into interdisciplinary methods and frontier developments. The public courses also cover foundational concepts, core technologies, application scenarios, and ethics and safety.

These resources can lower barriers to opening courses in areas that lack textbooks and specialist teachers, but their release does not show that schools have already offered a full set of courses. Follow-up should verify national-platform availability, local adoption, supporting teacher training, and actual classroom hours.