EDITORIAL: JULY AND AUGUST 2025

THE CHIMERA OF AI

As the Northern hemisphere breaths out at the end of the school year, ITM puts the spotlight on AI – where does it fit in to our work and what are we going to do about it?

If your immediate reaction to these questions is a sigh and a rolling of eyes, read on. We know this is not everyone’s cup of tea, so when our colleague Brian Ambrosio, hardly an AI geek, offered just to take a look at what’s going on in schools from a ‘beginner’s perspective’, we took him at his word. He – and we – were truly astounded at some of the extraordinary things he turned up amongst other more well-documented practice which is starting to go mainstream.

At the other end of the AI educational spectrum, Jonathan Wheeldon has been considering the implications of AI in depth for some time. His new website is well-worth a look. In ITM this month he examines the implication of AI for assessment and predicts a ‘new age of oracy’, which might just be the key that opens the door to the much-anticipated revolution in assessment.

The problems of what AI to teach and how to make what we teach age-appropriate will be facing  everyone next year. In some ways of course this is a classic curriculum problem, but the chimera of AI seems to be rapidly growing and evolving. How do you tie it down and organise rational, well-informed curriculum design that can be supported and implemented effectively?

In short, what does good practice look like? If you are looking for some really good benchmarks against which to compare your emerging programme articles by Richard Human and John Jones are well-worth a read. Richard has had the challenge of bringing together and supporting AI across Globeducate’s group of schools, while John Jones who is Director of Innovation at RGS Worcester shows what one school can achieve with thought, determination and a good plan. There is a lot to learn from both.