As artificial intelligence increasingly integrates into classrooms worldwide, a significant gathering of school leaders in Lucknow this week is promoting a countercultural message: the purpose of school is not to make children faster than machines, but more human than ever. The 17th Ed Leadership International Roundtable, scheduled from June 18-20, 2026, at the World Unity Convention Centre, City Montessori School, addresses the unfinished promise of India's National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The theme is "Growing the Inner Life in the Age of AI," focusing on transitioning classrooms from teaching to learning, from passive to active, and from academics alone to holistic, inclusive education.
Live Classroom Demonstration
Children will conduct a live classroom demonstration before the audience, involving parent interaction. They will work in pairs, lead their own learning, and teach one another rather than compete. This approach is based on ALfA (Accelerating Learning for All), a pedagogy developed by Dr. Sunita Gandhi, which operates on the PATH framework—Purposeful, Active, Transformative and Holistic education. A major highlight of the Roundtable is the action research conducted by approximately 500 teachers, documenting how PATH reshapes the everyday classroom. The findings will be presented by principals and teachers themselves.
Focus on Inner Life
"India's policy asks us to move from teaching to learning, and from marks to meaning. The hard part is the classroom," said Dr. Sunita Gandhi, Convenor of the Roundtable. "When children work in pairs all day, lead their own learning and stop competing, you watch confidence and curiosity return. As AI floods the classroom, that inner life—a child's own judgment, empathy and wonder—is the one thing we cannot automate, and the one thing we must protect."
21st-Century Skills Integrated
The approach is designed for more than literacy and numeracy. Because children collaborate all day in pairs, 21st-century skills—collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity—are not taught as add-ons but lived as the method itself. Organizers argue this results in an education for a more humane world: equitable, inclusive, and centered on a child's own agency rather than rote syllabus completion. ALfA is already in use in some 20,000 government and private schools, with agreements across 14 Indian states, and has been adopted internationally in Ghana and Peru.
FLN and ECCE Fair
Running alongside the deliberations is India's largest foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) and early childhood care and education (ECCE) fair, gathering resources, models, and practitioners under one roof. The Roundtable is convened by Dr. Sunita Gandhi, a Cambridge PhD and former World Bank economist, creator of ALfA and Chief Academic Advisor to City Montessori School (CMS), the host institution—recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's largest school and a recipient of the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education. Since 2008, the Roundtable has anticipated defining debates, from Well-being and Happiness in Education (2018) to A Stress-Free Education (2019).
Programme Highlights
- PATH, evidenced by teachers: Action research from some 500 teachers on Purposeful, Active, Transformative and Holistic education, presented by principals and teachers themselves.
- Children leading their own learning: A live, on-stage classroom demonstration by children, with parent interaction.
- 21st-century skills, lived not taught: Collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity built into paired learning all day long.
- India's largest FLN & ECCE fair: Foundational-learning and early-childhood resources, models and practitioners under one roof.
- Keeping the classroom human: Strategies to protect curiosity, equity, inclusion and a child's inner life as AI enters the room.
The Roundtable is designed primarily for private-school leaders—principals, founders, trustees, academic heads, teacher educators and curriculum designers—and for anyone shaping a humane, holistic future for K-12 education. Registrations are open at getilearn.org/edleader.
About GETI
The Global Education & Training Institute (GETI)—learn. teach. share.—convenes the Ed Leadership International Roundtable, now in its 17th edition, and develops training and leadership programmes that help schools put proven pedagogy into practice.
About DEVI Sansthan
Dignity Education Vision International (DEVI Sansthan), founded by Dr. Sunita Gandhi, is an Indian non-profit and US 501(c)(3) that created and delivers the ALfA pedagogy across some 20,000 schools in India and on multiple continents, recognized with the World Bank's Most Outstanding Contribution to Development Award.
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