Cuemath's Dubai Parent Summit: A Way Forward for Math Education in an AI World

Artificial intelligence has made parents, schools and employers rethink what education is actually for. What should children learn now? Which skills still hold their value? What careers are they being prepared for?

Cuemath used its Parent Summit in Dubai to put forward an answer.

The summit was held on 13 September 2026 at The Westin Dubai Mina Seyahi Beach Resort & Marina, under the theme The Future of Math Education. Around 70 families attended — more than 200 people in total — for an evening that paired three talks on where math education needs to go with an awards ceremony for results earned over the past academic year.

By the end of the night, 100 awards had been presented, 18 more students had been named MathFit Rising Stars, and four children had won a contest for teaching math back to the room.

The opening talk: what AI changed

Divykriti Madaan, who leads the brand team at Cuemath, opened the evening by setting out the evidence.

In August 2026, the Stanford Digital Economy Lab published a study called Canaries in the Coal Mine. Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar and Ruyu Chen went through payroll records for millions of workers, from the month ChatGPT launched through June 2026.

Miners once carried a canary underground. The bird could not stop the danger; it registered the danger first. The study asked which group of workers plays that role now.

It turned out to be the youngest. In the 40% of jobs most exposed to AI, employment for 22-to-25-year-olds fell 11%. There were no redundancy rounds, and starting salaries held steady. The jobs were simply never offered again — while every older age group in those same fields continued to grow.

The explanation offered on stage was straightforward. An entry-level hire was traditionally asked to learn the system, follow the guidelines, use the template and apply the process. Each of those is a training instruction — and anything that can be written into a training document can now be written into a machine. Employers once paid for people who followed well; that capability is now available at no cost and at unlimited scale.

What remains, the talk argued, is judgment. It set the distinction out in three pairs.

Every item in the right-hand column is a judgment rather than a procedure. That kind of thinking — clear, logical, creative — is what math builds, not as a school subject but as a habit of mind.

Demis Hassabis, who runs Google DeepMind and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024, made a similar point: “If I were a student today, I would study mathematics. It will power the AI revolution.”

What being MathFit actually looks like

Karan Singla, who leads math and learning at Cuemath, addressed the follow-up: what that goal looks like in an individual child.

The signs he described are ordinary enough for a parent to observe at home:

• The child asks why a rule works, not just what it is.
• They stay with a hard problem instead of stopping at the first wrong turn.
• They can explain their thinking out loud — and often end up teaching someone else.
• They break a big, confusing problem into steps they can handle.
• They notice patterns, and they notice when an answer doesn't look right.

None of those appear on a report card, and all of them can be trained. That was the premise of the next part of his talk: Cuemath's new Enrichment Math courses, built around the skills that hold their value in an AI world.

The courses teach children to spot misleading information, reason through choices when the answers are not clean, find the strategy in their own moves, and make sense of the world around them. The underlying capabilities are judgment, reasoning, strategic thinking, sense-making and abstract thinking. Some of the same material — real-world explorations, strategy games and puzzles — is openly available.

The case for productive struggle

Manan Khurma, Cuemath's founder and CEO, gave the keynote and spent it on the idea he has built the company around: productive struggle.

The phrase describes the zone where a problem is hard enough to demand real effort but not so hard that a child abandons it. That is where the learning happens. A child who only meets problems they can already do is rehearsing math rather than learning it.

On that view, the measure of a good math session is not how many answers came out right, but how long a child stayed in the struggle before one did.

The framing also explained the awards that followed. Few of the citations read that evening described a child as naturally gifted. Most described effort sustained across a full academic year.

100 awards, three categories

Nancy Sharma, who leads Cuemath's teacher community, read the citations. One hundred awards, split three ways.

A further 18 students were named MathFit Rising Stars — a special mention for effort and progress rather than a final score. That category included a Grade 9 student who took her mathematics result from 40 percent to 85, and a kindergartener who finished the Grade 0 curriculum in three months.

Some of the international results were remarkable by any standard:

• Revaan Birla, Grade 4 — ranked first in the world in the SOF International Mathematics Olympiad, which reaches students through 99,499 registered schools across 72 countries.
• Maahi Batra, Grade 6 — national gold and first place at Germany's Mathematik-Olympiade, competing in German, which is not her first language.
• Hritika Somani, Grade 7 — two golds at the Mathematik-Olympiade in Frankfurt.
• Krishiv Binoi Nair, Grade 4 — gold in Math Kangaroo, a competition entered by more than six million children across 90 countries.

Pooja Purohit, one of the Cuemath tutors in the room, summed up the purpose of the evening: “Online learning involves weeks of consistent, quiet focus from a child. The Parent Summit is meaningful because it brings that journey into the light. Hearing their name recognised in front of their families validates those hours of perseverance.”

67 children became the teachers

The final segment of the evening was the Teach-It-Back contest.

Ahead of the summit, children were asked to pick a piece of math they cared about and teach it to camera. Sixty-seven did, across 53 different topics, from kindergarten to Grade 10. Behind most of those recordings was a parent running lines, listening to a practice take or holding the phone.

Getting an answer right is a starting point. Explaining why it is right asks more. Teaching it to someone else asks the most, because it requires thinking about the listener — which example will help, which words make the reasoning clear, where to slow down.

Entries were judged on three criteria, in order:

1. Did the child explain the why, not just the what? The reason underneath the rule — why an idea works, or where it is actually used.
2. Did the logic hold? Could the explanation be followed step by step, without gaps.
3. Was it a joy to watch? A good example, a drawing, thoughtful pacing, a little humor.

Four children were recognized.

What the evening was actually about

The evening could be read simply as a prize-giving: a hundred trophies, a photo on stage, a night at a hotel by the marina.

What connects its two halves is more telling. The talks argued that the skills holding their value are reasoning and judgment — making sense of a problem, finding the pattern, deciding what is worth doing. The contest then handed the microphone to 67 children and asked them to demonstrate exactly that, out loud, for someone else.

Mathematical reasoning lets a child make sense of a problem. Strong communication lets them bring another person into the solution. Together they produce a child who can solve something and take people along — a reasonable description of what the coming decades will ask of them.

Cuemath runs free math events like this one in cities around the world. The Dubai summit was the largest of them so far.

The full roll of honor

Every student recognized on 13 September, and the tutor who worked with them.

Distinction in School Mathematics (56)

The strongest mathematicians in their own classrooms and year groups.

Distinction in National Competition (27)

Students measured against a whole country, and standing near the top of it.

Distinction in International Competition (17)

Students who competed against the world, and placed.

MathFit Rising Stars (18)

Special mentions for effort and progress across the year.

Congratulations to every one of them — and to the tutors who got them there.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the Cuemath Parent Summit 2026 in Dubai?

It was an evening for Cuemath families in the UAE, held on 13 September 2026 at The Westin Dubai Mina Seyahi Beach Resort & Marina. Around 70 families attended, more than 200 people in total. The theme was “The Future of Math Education.” The evening combined three short talks on what math education needs to become in an AI world with an awards ceremony recognising students for results earned over the past academic year.

How many students were recognized, and in which categories?

One hundred awards were presented across three categories: 56 Distinctions in School Mathematics, 27 Distinctions in National Competition and 17 Distinctions in International Competition. A further 18 students received MathFit Rising Star special mentions, which recognise effort and progress rather than a final score. Every name is listed in the roll of honor in this post, alongside the Cuemath tutor who worked with that student.

What does “MathFit” mean?

MathFit is Cuemath's term for mathematical fitness. A MathFit child can reason through an unfamiliar problem, stay with it when it gets difficult, explain their thinking to someone else, and feel genuinely at ease with numbers. It is deliberately not about calculating fast, memorising formulas or scoring full marks. Cuemath measures it across four areas: fluency, understanding, application and reasoning.

What was the Teach-It-Back contest?

It was a pre-event contest. Children chose a piece of math they cared about and recorded themselves teaching it. Sixty-seven children entered, covering 53 topics from kindergarten to Grade 10. Entries were judged on whether the child explained why an idea works, whether the logic held up step by step, and whether the explanation was engaging to watch. Four children were recognised at the summit.

Which international competitions did students win awards in?

Students were recognised for results in the SOF International Mathematics Olympiad, Germany's Mathematik-Olympiade, Math Kangaroo, the World Maths Championship, the KAUST Mathematics Competition in Saudi Arabia, the International Math Challenge and the Challenge ME Math Championship. Grade 4 student Revaan Birla ranked first worldwide in the SOF International Mathematics Olympiad.

What is the Stanford study the summit referred to?

It is called Canaries in the Coal Mine, published by the Stanford Digital Economy Lab in August 2026 by Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar and Ruyu Chen. The researchers examined payroll records for millions of workers through June 2026. They found that in the 40% of jobs most exposed to AI, employment for 22-to-25-year-olds fell 11%, while older age groups in the same fields grew.

What are Cuemath's Enrichment Math courses?

They are courses built around the reasoning skills that matter most in an AI world, rather than around exam syllabus. Children learn to spot misleading information, reason through choices when the answer isn't clean, find strategy in their own moves, and make sense of the world around them. The aim is to build judgment, reasoning, strategic thinking, sense-making and abstract thinking.

How can my child take part in something like this?

Cuemath runs free math events and contests for families around the world, and students who learn with Cuemath are invited to regional summits like the Dubai one. The usual starting point is a free trial class, which includes a written evaluation showing where your child currently stands in reasoning, fluency, understanding and application. No credit card is required to book one.