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The Secretariat

Who runs the Council, and what they cannot do

The Council determines what it recommends. The Secretariat makes it happen. It is provided by PrepGraph, which funds the Council, so every office's limits are published here beside its mandate.

Offices
3
Votes held
None
Provided by
PrepGraph
Counts towards quorum
Never

Read this first

How the Council and the Secretariat relate

The Council decides through its voting members: the Founding Chair, Ms. Sri Lakshmi, who accepted the office on 29 August 2026 and is not employed by PrepGraph, and the Founding Members. The Secretariat is provided by PrepGraph and staffed by the three named officers below. It serves the Council, holds no vote and counts towards no quorum.

The Council determines the recommendations and principles. The PrepGraph-supported Secretariat enables research, coordination, publication and implementation. The Secretariat holds no vote.
What the Secretariat holds in the Council, by number.
Secretariat officers3All three employed by PrepGraph
Votes held by the Secretariat0On publication, standards, membership or anything else
Officers counted towards quorum0The Council is never quorate on the strength of its Secretariat
Council publications it may approve0Approval sits with the Founding Chair and a majority of the voting members
The funder's other activities

PrepGraph's activity has three parts: learning software sold to students, families and schools, from school to first job; an internal research and development function; and this Council. The first two are commercial. This one is not, and the rules in the Charter and the independence policy are what hold the boundary.

The offices

Three offices, each published with its limits

Each office below is named with its holder, the holder's role at PrepGraph, what the office does and what it may not do. The rule that binds it hardest is set apart at the foot.

Umesh Sharma

Founder & Executive Convener

Founder & CEO, PrepGraph

LinkedIn profile

Holds the founding intent and the research direction. Brings questions, evidence and funding to the Council, and holds no vote on anything it decides.

What this office does

  • Bring emerging research and technology questions to the Council, including the ones that are inconvenient for a company selling AI to schools.
  • Identify where Indian schools are working without guidance, and propose what the Council might write.
  • Present implementation evidence from schools, with its provenance and its limitations stated, for the Council to accept, discount or reject.
  • Fund and organise studies under the Research Agenda, on the terms that instrument sets and no others.
  • Convene working groups and find people willing to do the work.
  • Commit PrepGraph’s funding for a full term in writing, before the first appointment of that term.
  • Translate what the Council publishes into tools a school can use, at PrepGraph’s cost and without the Council’s endorsement of any such tool.

What it may not do

  • Holds no vote — on publication, on standards, on membership, on a vendor question, or on anything else.
  • Does not count towards quorum. The Council is never quorate on the strength of its Secretariat.
  • Cannot approve, amend, delay or withhold a Council publication. That power sits with the Chair and a majority of the voting members.
  • Does not sit on the ethics review panel and takes no part in its decisions.
  • Is not present when the Council decides any matter in which PrepGraph has an interest.
  • May propose an agenda item; the Chair may decline it without giving a reason.
  • Cannot remove the Founding Chair, shorten her term, or appoint her successor.

The Executive Convener may contribute research, evidence and proposals. Council recommendations are determined collectively and are not subject to commercial approval by PrepGraph.

Rekha Sharma

Executive Director & Secretary-General

Chief Operating Officer, PrepGraph

Runs the Council’s business day to day: operations, governance, records, programmes and publication.

What this office does

  • Convene meetings, circulate papers in advance, and keep minutes that record disagreement as well as agreement.
  • Maintain the register of members and the record of the Council’s business.
  • Coordinate members, Expert Fellows and working groups, and keep the work programme moving between meetings.
  • Organise roundtables, convenings and educator programmes, and see that they are documented.
  • Carry Council outputs through drafting, member comment, dissent, approval and publication, free and ungated.
  • Manage relationships with schools, associations, academics and other bodies in the Council’s name and not in PrepGraph’s.
  • Track what happens to Council recommendations after publication, including where they are ignored.
  • Keep Council communications separate from PrepGraph product marketing, in channel, in list and in wording.

What it may not do

  • Holds no vote on any question, vendor-specific and standards decisions included.
  • Cannot approve a Council document, or issue one that the Chair has not approved in writing.
  • Cannot decide who is invited to membership; the Chair invites the first cohort and the Founding Members assent thereafter.
  • Holds no commercial-relationship data about members or participants. Declared interests are received, held and published by the Reviewer of Concerns.
  • Cannot use a participant list, an attendee list or a contact detail for any PrepGraph commercial purpose.
  • Cannot amend an instrument or any Council record on her own authority.

Nothing is published in the Council’s name without the Founding Chair’s written approval. The Secretariat drafts; it does not decide.

Anisha Sarkar

Director, Education Partnerships & National Outreach

Education partnerships, PrepGraph

Builds the Council’s external network — schools, principals, associations and regional convenings — and is bound by a strict rule that keeps that work apart from her commercial work at PrepGraph.

What this office does

  • Build participation: invite school leaders, work with school groups and associations, and convene regional roundtables.
  • Represent the Secretariat at school-network and association meetings.
  • Coordinate outreach for founding membership and for Expert Fellowships, on the Chair’s invitation and over the Chair’s signature.
  • Organise the logistics of convenings and see that a published note follows each one.
  • Carry the Council’s instruments to every school that can use them, whether or not it is a PrepGraph customer.

What it may not do

  • May not raise, invite, accept or continue a commercial conversation about a PrepGraph product, price, pilot or contract inside a Council activity.
  • Where a school raises commercial interest during a Council activity, she says at that moment that the conversation moves to PrepGraph’s ordinary business channel.
  • May not use a Council invitation list, attendee list or contact detail as a prospect list, or pass one to anyone who would.
  • Holds no vote, and does not count towards quorum.
  • May not present, demonstrate or describe a PrepGraph product at a Council convening, in any format, including in answer to a direct question — the answer is the referral above.

A Council roundtable that becomes a product demonstration is a breach of the independence policy, and anyone who sees it may report it.

Areas of work

Working groups

The Charter provides for six working groups, one to each pillar it chiefly serves. Each is led by an Expert Fellow appointed by the Founding Members.

Pillar 1

Responsible AI & Governance

Model policy a school can adopt, the conditions on any AI touching a child, and the vendor question set.

Responsible AI in Schools

Pillar 2

Teacher AI Enablement

What a teacher should be able to do, described in observable levels, and what a school owes them to get there.

Teacher AI Enablement

Pillar 3

Student Safety & Wellbeing

Age-appropriateness, disclosure to students, academic honesty taught rather than policed, and the harms to watch for.

Student AI Readiness

Pillar 5

School AI Readiness

The readiness framework, its revision from field use, and what it costs a school with no technology staff.

School Leadership & Governance

Pillar 4

Academic Innovation

Learning gaps, formative assessment and differentiated teaching — and honest measurement of whether any of it helped.

Academic Innovation

Pillar 6

Policy & Standards

How Council work meets the obligations schools already carry, and where a floor of practice is worth proposing.

Research & Evidence

How independence is held

Every limit here is written down, and anyone can check it.

Every limit on this page is written into the Founding Charter or the independence policy, and both are published in full on this site. Anyone who sees a limit broken can report it to the Council.

Independence & conflict policy The Charter’s composition article

Status

The Council is a voluntary, non-statutory initiative. It is not a government, regulatory or accrediting body, and it does not certify, rate or approve schools, curricula or products.

Neutrality

The Council does not endorse individual procurement decisions or technology vendors. Its role is to advance responsible AI readiness, educator capability and evidence-based innovation in schools.

The convener’s other sites