VMPL
Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) [India], June 15: As artificial intelligence pours into classrooms worldwide, one of India's largest gatherings of school leaders opens in Lucknow this week with a deliberately 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 runs June 18-20, 2026 at the World Unity Convention Centre, City Montessori School, taking up the unfinished promise of India's National Education Policy (NEP) 2020--moving classrooms from teaching to learning, from passive to active, and from academics alone to holistic, inclusive education--under the theme "Growing the Inner Life in the Age of AI."
What that looks like will be on stage, not just in the programme. Children will give a live classroom demonstration before the audience, with parent interaction--working in pairs, leading their own learning, and teaching one another rather than competing. This is ALfA (Accelerating Learning for All), Dr. Sunita Gandhi's pedagogy, running on the highway of PATH--Purposeful, Active, Transformative and Holistic education. A major spotlight of the Roundtable is the action research of some 500 teachers documenting how PATH reshapes the everyday classroom, with the findings presented by principals and teachers themselves.
"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."
The approach is built for far more than literacy and numeracy. Because children collaborate all day in pairs, the 21st-century skills--collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity--are not taught as add-ons but lived as the method itself. The result, organisers argue, is an education for a more humane world: equitable, inclusive, and centred on a child's own agency rather than the rote completion of a syllabus. It is also disruptive at scale--ALfA is already in use in some 20,000 government and private schools, with agreements to implement across 14 Indian states, and has been adopted internationally in classrooms in Ghana and Peru.
Running alongside the deliberations is India's largest FLN and ECCE fair--foundational literacy and numeracy, and early childhood care and education--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--recognised 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 the field's defining debates, from Well-being and Happiness in Education (2018) to A Stress-Free Education (2019).
On the Programme
- 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 the 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, recognised with the World Bank's Most Outstanding Contribution to Development Award.
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