OpenAI Launches "National Education Program" with Initial Eight-Country Partnership

May 20 – Official sources shared that OpenAI announced ChatGPT now has over 900 million weekly active users, while Codex boasts more than 4 million users. The AI firm expects these AI tools will bring greater creativity, smarter functionality, and advanced technical skills to every student globally. OpenAI stresses it prioritizes AI’s impact on cognition, learning, and long-term development, noting responsible integration requires large-scale, government-led research collaboration. Earlier this year, the “Education for Countries” initiative launched at the Davos Forum has formed its first cohort of national partners, including Estonia, Greece, Italy’s CRUI, Slovakia, Trinidad and Tobago, Kazakhstan, the UAE, and Jordan. The collaboration centers on three core pillars: research-driven AI rollout, localized AI learning tools, and teacher training and empowerment. Estonia rolled out ChatGPT Edu nationwide via the AI Leap Foundation, reaching over 20,000 students and 4,600 teachers, and partnered with the University of Tartu and Stanford University to study AI’s impact on classroom learning. Jordan’s AI education assistant, Siraj, has served more than 1 million students and 100,000 teachers. Greece launched an AI startup accelerator, selecting 21 AI-focused startups from 240 applications. Kazakhstan deployed ChatGPT Edu across 20 regions nationwide, with over 84,000 education staff completing AI readiness training. Ninety percent of surveyed teachers called ChatGPT Edu helpful, and active educators sent 1.5 million prompts in its first month. An early university survey in Slovakia found over 90% of teachers reported higher work efficiency, saving roughly 5 hours weekly. Singapore has formally joined the program. The Singapore Ministry of Education will partner with OpenAI to support personalized learning use cases, such as helping students learn their mother tongue more interactively. OpenAI will also back educators through Singapore’s dedicated OpenAI Academy section and a “Teacher Using Codex” hackathon. OpenAI announced it will soon launch the first phase of the “OpenAI Luminaries” program, focused on co-designing resources with teachers, creating classroom practice materials, and sharing cross-border educator-led case studies. The next group of national partners is currently being vetted and will be announced later this year.