London’s first AI primary school: bright idea or a sign of the dystopian times?

“AI can deliver a whole new era. It can be the biggest boost for education in the last 500 years,” said then education secretary Bridget Phillipson, in a speech earlier this year, likening it to the invention of the printing press. “The potential is huge, but so is our responsibility.”Enter Inspired Edge, an “AI-enabled primary school”, which is bringing its flagship to Olympia, west London, in September next year, with further sites planned in Lisbon, Milan, Madrid and São Paulo. “Education must evolve to reflect the world children are growing up in, not the world as it was,” says its founder, Nadim Nsouli, who has a background in private equity.Certainly, today’s pupils are AI natives — in the UK, 22 per cent of eight-to-12-year-olds (and a fifth of teachers) already use AI tools. Inspired, which was founded in 2013 and already owns 125 independent schools globally, hopes its new “Edge” model will use the personalisation made possible by AI to help children — from Years Three to Six, although the school won’t operate in traditional year groups — to learn at their own pace. “The programme is both AI-powered, but also a school for the age of AI,” says Mike Lambert, Inspired’s global education director. On the ground, the “Edge” model splits the day in half. In the mornings, pupils will cover core subjects, designed around the national curriculum — English, maths, science, languages, computing and AI. According to the website, children aren’t taught by AI — instead it’s used to “diagnose misconceptions, provide practice, track progress and help pupils work at the right level”.“It’s not about replacing education with technology, but using it to equip children with the skills that they’re going to need,” says Lambert. End of the line for homeworkWhat it doesn’t mean is “children left to their own devices on screens,” Lambert emphasises. “They might have a 20-minute burst of adaptive maths and then work in a small group with a teacher. You might do reading out loud, then go onto a platform and do English comprehension for 20 minutes. It’s 60 to 90 minutes maximum screen time and then the screens are gone.”Afternoons will be for “life skills” such as financial literacy or public speaking. There will be Apprentice-style entrepreneurial tasks on how to launch a small business or run an Airbnb. Art, writing and PE will still feature. There are no plans for homework.And forget end-of-term reports. Instead, parents will access a 24/7 dashboard to track their child’s learning in real time — have they completed 80 per cent of their science for the day and how have they scored? “It’s very granular. The insight that parents get will be profound,” Lambert adds. Is this the future of schooling in the capital? Certainly, its potential is under scrutiny — in February, MPs launched a cross-party inquiry into the role of AI in education, from early years to university, including the challenges around critical thinking, problem solving and safety (Inspired Edge says the systems it uses are “fully GDPR and AI Act compliant”.) “London attracts forward-minded parents with one eye on the future” explains Lambert, who says they’re open to other schools using their model. Read MoreHe’s already meeting one or two applicants each week, most recently two surgeons with a young son, and expects the school to open with 20 to 30 students. Fees are still being finalised but, says Lambert, it will be “at the top end of the bracket, around 20 per cent premium on our existing London prep school fees.” (Which, at Fulham Prep, are currently £9,180 per term.)Sandra Leaton Gray, professor of education futures at UCL and government adviser, thinks we should approach AI in education with caution. “The point about going to school is that it’s all about human relationships, learning to be in a group and what to do when things don’t work out. They’re really important for small people,” she says.Chatbots instead of teachersWhere AI can work in primary schools, she thinks, is for “repetitive drill learning”, such as practising times tables or spelling. But she warns against an over-reliance on it. “The most wonderful thing about humans is how messy our brains are”Sandra Leaton Gray, professor of education futures at UCL“Learning isn’t linear and the one most wonderful thing about humans is how messy our brains are and how we can come at knowledge in holistic ways. That also helps us retain it in our memories.”It is possible, she says, that some bright pupils might be more motivated to learn through AI tools and respond to their reward systems. But “my fear for the future is that pupils in not very affluent communities will end up with a rubbish chatbot in the name of education, sitting in booths all day”. The rush to use AI in education reminds her of the “moral panic” around computers in the 1990s: “everybody was saying, well, we have to use Microsoft products otherwise when they get to the world of work they won’t know anything,” she recalls. “Britain is ranked as a top 10 education system — why are we becoming so dependent on people telling us it needs fixing? There’s a lot of money to be made in selling AI platforms.” As for the metrics? Leaton Gray calls them “dangerous”, with children likely to start comparing which level they’re on. “If you want to set the scene for mental health problems in adolescence, make children overly concerned about how they learn in comparison with others and get them thinking about their own position in a hierarchy,” she says. “Sometimes, while they’re thinking about what they’re learning, they just need to slow down and look out of the window.”