The writer, an educationalist and author, is founding director of Wellington College Education
Education the world over was in crisis even before Covid hit. Now students are up in arms — literally in France, where hundreds of thousands of young people have been protesting at the lack of investment in their education and worries about future jobs. Will this academic year see similar frustrations spill over on to the streets in schools and universities worldwide?
The catalyst is ubiquitous AI, which is finally detonating the tired system of factory education that has predominated since the last century. Based on passive learning and formulaic exams, this system has endured to the detriment of developing our young people’s many faculties, including their entrepreneurial, scholarly, creative, artistic and communal as well as sporting talents.
Every era reimagines education in the light of changing technological, economic and social imperatives. For years, employers have been complaining bitterly about the skills of those arriving in the workplace. The time has come to address the problem. For five years the OECD has been working with the top education-performing countries internationally to develop a new model for education based on “human flourishing”, highlighting precisely the attributes that will be required in the age of AI.
The five competencies it now recommends are: acting in the world, understanding rather than mere knowledge, appreciating the world, behaving ethically and becoming adaptive problem solvers. Academic subjects and rigour will remain but there will be more space for independent inquiry, prioritising resilience and team problem solving, assessed to provide a much deeper profile of each pupil’s capabilities. These are the skills required for students everywhere to use AI positively rather than to swallowed up by it.
Polling shows that only 9 per cent of 11 to 24-year-olds in the UK believe their schools and universities understand what is happening on AI and how extensively it is being used by students. The ignorance and lack of grip by those running these institutions is staggering. Parents speak of children giving up on school or college because the AI agents can coach them better at home with personalised teaching, detailed suggestions for improvement and precise instructions on how to get top grades in each subject.
This week a father asked me, “My daughter has a place at a top university but is refusing to go. She can’t see the point. What can I do?” “Nothing,” I responded. “If her school has done so little to encourage her curiosity and interest in her subject, you shouldn’t force her.” Not the answer he expected. But a student in his final year at a prestigious university sympathised, telling me that AI had told him and his friends the mark schemes for achieving top-class degrees and the minimal level of study they needed to put in, so they now had time for full-time jobs.
Is this the future? When schools and universities are only about passing exams and not places of enrichment, joy and belonging, it is not surprising that the young are voting with their feet. Meanwhile, academics everywhere complain that students arrive at university lacking genuine interest in their subjects, curiosity and appetite for independent thought.
Wellington College is now working with the OECD to introduce the new model for its own students and at partner state schools across the UK and internationally. The International Baccalaureate, the most respected curriculum and exam system in the world, has also fully embraced this new human flourishing model. The aim is for students to succeed as well or better at exams while offering a saner and more enriching system. To put humanity back at the heart of education is the best response to the blisteringly quick spread of this technology.