The Delhi government plans to introduce the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and game-based techniques for continuous assessment of students under its new state school education board, officials said after the board's first general body meeting on Tuesday. The Delhi cabinet approved the Delhi Board of School Education (DBSE) on March 6. The society for the board was registered on March 19. The board is likely to be operational for up to at least the middle-school level (up to Class 8) from the upcoming academic session. Delhi education minister Manish Sisodia, who is the head of the board, said students will be assessed holistically on the basis of their knowledge, attitude, and skills.

Some areas in Japan are struggling to secure enough public school staff to teach Japanese to children with foreign roots amid a recent surge in the number of such students in the country, a Kyodo News survey showed Wednesday. The city of Yokohama, Saitama Prefecture and Fukushima Prefecture began the academic years of 2018 and 2019 without enough Japanese-language teachers, with a deficit of 28 in public elementary and junior high schools, according to the survey of local education boards. The three authorities were short by 21, five, and two teachers respectively. Almost all vacancies were able to be filled by the middle of these school years, but the Fukushima education board was unable to fill one spot during the whole of the 2018 academic year. With the number of children without adequate Japanese-language skills on the rise, the education ministry formulated a standard in 2017 that requires schools to have one licensed Japanese-language teacher per 18 students with such needs, aiming to achieve the target gradually over the next 10 years.

The education board in Hiroshima Prefecture has pioneered the use of a pint-sized "surrogate robot" to realize what was previously considered impossible: allowing hospitalized students to take classes remotely without being monitored by teachers. The success of the board's tech-savvy initiative, considered an educational first in Japan, has prompted the education ministry to relax rigid requirements that have long prevented many hospitalized high school students from qualifying for class attendance. Under the board's initiative, jointly developed with Hiroshima University Hospital, a 23-centimeter-tall robot called Orihime is placed in a classroom to act as an avatar for an ill student in the hospital. The Orihime robot simultaneously records and broadcasts the content of each class for hospitalized students to watch on their tablets, enabling them to take part in classes in real time. Students not only can watch real-time footage but speak to their classmates or teachers through the robot as well. They can also command Orihime to move and make a variety of gestures, such as turning its head sideways and waving.

"Through an AI theoretical analysis of past data, we will be able to properly respond to cases without just relying on teachers' past experiences," Otsu Mayor Naomi Koshi said of the planned analysis, set to begin from the next fiscal year. AI will be used to analyze 9,000 suspected bullying cases reported by elementary and junior high schools in the city over the six years through fiscal 2018. It will examine the school grade and gender of the suspected victims and perpetrators as well as when and where the incidents occurred. Statistical analysis of the data is expected to help local authorities and teachers identify forms of bullying that tend to escalate in seriousness and which therefore require extra attention, the Otsu board of education said. The AI analysis will also look at other factors, such as school absenteeism and academic achievement, and the findings will be compiled into a report for use by teachers and in training seminars.