Punjab has achieved a landmark in digital education, recording the highest usage of Google for Education’s Read Along application within Google Classroom across the entire Asia Pacific region, surpassing all other markets in a result that reflects a sustained and strategically executed initiative by the provincial government, Tech Valley Pakistan, Intel, and Google for Education working in coordination with the Punjab Education Foundation. The milestone, which positions Pakistan as a regional leader in artificial intelligence-assisted literacy education, was built through a journey that began with a single school in Lahore and scaled to tens of thousands of students across the province in a matter of months.
The foundation of the achievement was the Google for Education Center of Excellence established at Government Pilot High School in Wahdat Colony, Lahore, inaugurated by Punjab’s Minister for School Education Rana Sikandar Hayat as a model reference school designed to guide scalable adoption of artificial intelligence tools including Read Along across public schools. Following the center’s launch, Tech Valley conducted an intensive two-week pilot focused on Grade Six and Seven students, pairing each child with an artificial intelligence-powered reading companion through the Read Along application. The results demonstrated measurable improvements in English fluency and student engagement, validating the model for broader deployment. Punjab Education Foundation, under the leadership of Minister Rana Sikandar Hayat and Managing Director Shahid Fareed, then stepped in to scale the initiative province-wide, transforming what had begun as a controlled pilot into a movement touching schools across Punjab.
The numbers behind the Asia Pacific-leading achievement underscore the scope of what was accomplished in a compressed timeframe. Twenty master trainers were developed to lead classroom implementation, 86 Punjab Education Foundation partner schools were onboarded onto the platform, 2,103 teachers were trained and equipped to integrate the Read Along application into their daily instruction, and 25,107 students are now actively using artificial intelligence to read more confidently, learn at their own pace, and build the English language skills that carry significant implications for their future academic and professional opportunities. The initiative represents one of the most concrete and measurable examples of artificial intelligence being deployed at scale within Pakistan’s public education system, and Punjab’s Asia Pacific ranking confirms that the execution quality matched the ambition of the vision. Schools and educational institutions interested in joining the digital education initiative can contact Tech Valley Pakistan at hello@techvalley.pk
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