The next phase of OpenAI’s Education for Countries
Key Points
- Singapore joins Education for Countries
- Research-driven, teacher-first deployments
- Nationwide ChatGPT Edu rollouts show measurable impact
Summary
OpenAI announced the next phase of Education for Countries at the Education World Forum (May 20, 2026). The program pairs government partners with OpenAI to run research-driven, system-wide deployments of ChatGPT Edu, Codex, and the OpenAI API, with an emphasis on localized tools, privacy/compliance, and teacher enablement. Singapore joins the program; existing cohort countries (Estonia, Greece, Italy CRUI, Slovakia, Trinidad & Tobago, Kazakhstan, UAE, Jordan) report early, measurable improvements in adoption, teacher productivity, and large-scale reach.
Key Points
- Program pillars: research-driven deployment (Learning Outcomes Measurement Suite), localized AI learning tools (ChatGPT Edu, Codex, API), and teacher training/certification.
- Deployments begin as government-led research partnerships to measure impact, adapt models and share findings publicly.
- Engineer-facing platforms: system-wide ChatGPT Edu, Codex, OpenAI API, and Workspace Agents used in policy and standards drafting.
- Privacy & compliance: focus on secure, localised access and sovereign capability in collaboration with ministries and local research partners.
- Early signals: Estonia (20k+ students, 4.6k teachers), Jordan (1M+ students engaged), Kazakhstan (84k educators trained; 1.5M prompts), Slovakia (teacher productivity gains ~5 hours/week).
- Singapore collaboration: MOE and GovTech integrations for personalized learning, mother-tongue support, OpenAI Academy workshops, and Codex hackathons.
- Operational guidance: treat deployments as iterative research projects, instrument learning outcomes from day one, co-design with teachers, and prioritize teacher enablement for responsible scaling.
Engineer guidance
- Integrations: expect platform-level APIs and localized ChatGPT Edu endpoints—plan for regional deployment, auth, and data locality requirements.
- Measurement: instrument interventions with the Learning Outcomes Measurement Suite and log prompts/interactions for longitudinal analysis (with privacy controls).
- Tooling: leverage Codex for classroom tooling and Workspace Agents for policy/standards automation; prototype in teacher-led hackathons to validate workflows.
- Collaboration: coordinate with education authorities and researchers for co-design, ethical review, and public reporting of results.
Next steps
OpenAI is recruiting new country partners and launching OpenAI Luminaries (teacher co-design track). Contact OpenAI to apply for the next cohort or to pilot research-driven deployments.