Hong Kong plans to introduce a new technology subject in primary schools from September 2028, with AI included in the curriculum. The proposal would let pupils as young as seven practise simple conversations with an AI system, making this a policy shift towards teaching the technology rather than merely warning children about it.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
The subject, Information and Innovation Technology, is due to be introduced gradually from September 2028. Hong Kong’s Education Bureau says the provisional curriculum framework is intended to build pupils’ curiosity, digital literacy and creativity.
The South China Morning Post reports that pupils will learn about AI before using simple prompts or commands to hold conversations with a system. The framework is provisional, so the details may change before it reaches classrooms.
Why it matters
Teaching children how to interact with AI puts basic AI literacy alongside broader digital skills in the school curriculum. The age detail matters: this is intended to begin with primary pupils, not just older students already studying computing.
It also makes the curriculum’s practical approach a live question. Simple conversations are a start, but they are not the same as understanding how an AI system produces an answer or when it might be wrong.
Our read
This is a meaningful education-policy development, not a promise that seven-year-olds will be building their own chatbots. The useful measure will be what the final framework asks pupils to understand and do, rather than whether it gets them talking to a machine early.
What to watch
- Whether the provisional framework changes before its planned rollout.
- How the subject will be introduced across primary schools from September 2028.
- What pupils will learn about AI beyond using prompts and commands.
Discussion spark: Should primary-school AI lessons focus first on using AI tools, or on understanding their limits before children rely on them?
Sources and evidence
- Source update (30 October 2026, 15:37 UTC)
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