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Seroond: Building a New Generation of Schools

While placing transformative teachers in individual classrooms is crucial, we also zoom out to the school level. Enter Seroond, the Armenia Education Initiative's (AEI) school programs. "Seroond" means "generation" in Armenian, and true to its name, this work is about building a new generation of schools.

Seroond advances on two fronts at once:

  • Seroond Catalyst: Unlocking the potential of public schools. We partner with schools that are hungry to transform outcomes for students by revolutionizing their teaching practices.
  • Seroond School: Building from a blank page. Our flagship innovation school, designed from first principles as an AI-integrated, personalized learning environment, and documented so the model can be replicated.

One arm fixes what exists. The other invents what comes next. Together they answer both halves of the question: how good can an Armenian school become, and what should an Armenian school be?

Seroond Catalyst Program

The Challenge

Too many schools in Armenia, especially in rural areas, struggle with declining enrollment, outdated methods, and low morale. Talented students leave for the capital if they can; those who stay don't get the opportunities they deserve. We asked a bold question: what if a struggling public school could be transformed into a model of excellence… and that example replicated nationwide?

Our Theory of Action

If we strengthen leadership at every level of a school, then schools develop the capacity to continuously improve, so that lasting educational transformation is owned and sustained by the community itself.

How We Do It

  • Student Leadership: Students develop leadership through community-based projects, teamwork, and real opportunities to shape school life.
  • Teacher Leadership: Teachers receive intensive coaching and professional learning to become mentors, innovators, and instructional leaders.
  • School Leadership: Principals and administrators receive ongoing support to build strong school cultures, lead improvement efforts, and sustain change.
  • Community Leadership: Families and community members play an active role in shaping the school's vision and priorities while partnering with educators to bring that vision to life.

Aligning these three levels creates a virtuous cycle: motivated students inspire teachers, empowered teachers support one another, and an effective principal champions the whole team. The school begins to believe success is possible here and now.

What the program involves:

  • A custom transformation plan for each school, co-created with that school's stakeholders: principal, lead teachers, local officials, parents. We bring frameworks and know-how, but the vision is local so the school truly owns it.
  • Intensive training for participating teachers and principals on student-centered methodology, leadership, and change management through workshops, visits to high-performing schools, and ongoing coursework.
  • On-site coaching and monitoring, with frequent classroom observation, modeled lessons, and data tracking on performance, attendance, and behavior. If something isn't working, we iterate in real time.
  • Additional resources: updated learning materials, technology, small grants for school improvement projects, and connections to competitions, exhibitions, and exchanges. We rally partners, from internet connectivity to library renovations, so the environment matches the ambition.
  • Community engagement through meetings, workshops, and volunteer opportunities, transforming the school into a center that brings families together.

Early Results: Proof of Concept

Our pilot Seroond school, launched in late 2020 at Takhta Primary School in Tavush region, saw astonishing changes:

Within two months of kickoff, enrollment nearly doubled (from 47 to almost 90); families started bringing their children back once word spread. A year later, enrollment crossed 100. In a region where schools are shutting down for lack of students, Takhta's revival is an outlier.

Learning outcomes jumped: average math mastery reached 83%, literacy showed dramatic improvement (99% growth in one year), and the average student leadership score reached 90%.

Teacher and principal satisfaction hit 100%. Every single teacher and the principal recommended that other schools join the Seroond network, a striking validation from people who were initially nervous about such big changes.

The school climate transformed: student clubs, project displays on the walls, teachers collaborating after hours, parents joining school events.

Endline Results, May 2026

Based on this success, we expanded across the regions and into Yerevan. In the 2025–2026 academic year the Catalyst Program ran in five public schools in Lori, Vayots Dzor, and Yerevan, working directly with 135 teachers and 1,810 students, and engaging their families to strengthen the school community around them. As 2025–2026 academic year summative survey reveals, the program received very high satisfaction ratings across all key stakeholder groups: Principals – NPS 100, Teachers – NPS 100, and Parents – 98% satisfaction.

Schools in their first year of the programme recorded 22% overall academic growth across all assessed subjects, with 30% growth in literacy and 31% in numeracy.

Schools completing their second year show that the gains hold and compound: 89% of students met age-appropriate literacy benchmarks and 90% met age-appropriate numeracy benchmarks. This is the finding that matters most. A one-year jump can be a burst of attention; a second-year cohort at nine in ten students on benchmark is a school that has changed how it works.

Demand Is Outpacing Supply

Interest in the model has grown faster than our capacity to meet it. Twenty-one schools in Tavush and Lori have applied to join, with 572 teachers signalling their commitment and readiness to take part.

Nine out of ten applicant schools named the results of existing Seroond schools as their main reason for applying. Asked what convinced them, school leaders pointed consistently to three things:

  • the change in school culture and the overall learning environment;
  • the professional growth and instructional capacity of their teachers;
  • the academic progress of their students.

Schools are not applying because of a brochure. They are applying because they have seen a neighbouring school change.

Catalyst Program: Government Partnership and System-Level Adoption

In August 2025 the Ministry invited Seroond to implement its school-climate components in six newly established educational complexes, the first time our model was taken up at the state's initiative rather than our own.

The work focused on integrating Seroond's social-emotional learning and parent engagement frameworks to strengthen school culture and student wellbeing. Over a single semester, Seroond mentors supported implementation across all six schools, reaching 444 students, their families, and 114 teachers.

The results were emphatic. In endline surveys, more than 90% of teachers across the six schools reported that Seroond's social-emotional learning practices improved the overall school environment, strengthened relationships among students and staff, and fostered a more supportive learning culture.

Building on that pilot, in 2026 the Ministry proposed implementing the full two-year Seroond Catalyst Program in 20 newly established educational complexes, beginning September 2026, and committed to co-invest, covering 20% of implementation costs across all twenty schools. Donor funding has already been secured for ten of them.

A government that puts its own budget behind a model has stopped treating it as someone else's pilot. This is what adoption looks like.

Partnerships

Seroond is implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of Armenia and regional governments, with international expertise. The government is watching closely; our goal is for the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports to adopt and scale what works from Seroond into national policy, including new principal training, curricular flexibility for project-based learning, and more. Seroond is a research and development (R&D) lab for the future of Armenian schools.

Vision for Scale

Twenty schools is not the destination; it is the proof that the model travels. Our aim is a system that can eventually transform all 1,400 schools in Armenia. Catalyst Program schools are prototypes of what's possible. As we refine the model, we will expand the network, systematize what works, and advocate for those changes nationally. In time, every school could be a Seroond school: a place where students thrive, teachers lead, and communities rally behind education.

Seroond School: Our Flagship Innovation School

Transforming an inherited school teaches you how much is possible within the existing design. Seroond School asks a different question: what would we build if there were no inherited design at all?

Seroond School is our most ambitious build, a school authored from a blank page, for the world our students will actually inherit rather than the one for which their textbooks were originally written.

A personalized learning environment. At its core, Seroond School integrates advanced technologies (including artificial intelligence) into daily instruction. AI does what it does best: diagnosing exactly where each student is, adapting practice in real time, and giving teachers a live picture of every learner in the room. That frees our educators for what only humans can do: mentoring, provoking curiosity, building character, and holding high expectations. Students move at the pace of mastery rather than the pace of the calendar.

Emotional strength, built into the school itself. Social-emotional learning at Seroond is not a subject but a climate, present in how the day is structured, how adults relate to children, how conflict is handled, and how we define success. Students grow up knowing themselves, managing what they feel, and caring for one another. In a country that has asked much of its young people, this is the ground everything else stands on.

Learning built around real problems. The curriculum is organized around projects and challenges rather than isolated subjects, with Armenian cultural heritage, values, and identity woven throughout, and with the skills, languages, and habits of mind that prepare students for full participation in a global society.

Leadership as a graduation requirement. Every student leaves Seroond School having led something: a project, a team, a community initiative. This is the Seroond conviction carried into a purpose-built setting.

Designed to be replicated. Everything we build through Seroond (i.e. the operating model, the curriculum, the teacher training, the technology stack, the assessment tools) is documented so it can be licensed and adapted by other schools, school systems, and governments, in Armenia and beyond. And what proves itself at Seroond School flows directly back into the Catalyst Program, so schools across the country inherit the breakthroughs. This is what leapfrogging looks like in practice: not one exceptional school, but a replicable blueprint for many.

Opening September 1, 2026

  • Location: Vahagni, in partnership with the Hovnanian family
  • Grades: Grade 1 in the founding year, adding a grade each year as the cohort advances
  • Enrollment: Up to 20 students in the founding cohort
  • Access: A public authored school, free of charge, with no tuition
  • Founding partners: The Lebaredian family, with more to come

Call to Action: Join the Seroond Revolution — If you are a principal or educator hungry for change, or a policymaker looking for solutions, come see Seroond in action. Visit our schools, meet the students, talk to teachers who've rekindled their passion. Bring your school into the Catalyst Program, adopt a school, fund a cohort, help us build Seroond School, or partner with us to bring Seroond to a new region.