THINKING ABOUT BEING 12…

I recently spent an afternoon with a 12-year-old called Aida. She is doing ok at school, has friends she adores (with the average amount of drama), thinks her Mum is ‘so lame’ and is proud as anything that ‘no-one knows that I get AI to do all my work’. 

Her school, which is average compared to most where she lives, have told their students that they are not allowed to use AI and will be sanctioned if they do.  Aida (and everyone she knows) uses Snapchat’s MyAi in the classroom when the teacher isn’t looking, and then Chat GPT for any longer pieces of work when she is at home.  She knows to change some of the words, and to gently edit to put in some mistakes so that her teacher does not become suspicious, but otherwise copies and pastes without reading it through. 

This worries me deeply on many levels.  Aida is not learning as much as she could be in school. 

Aida was 7 when the Covid-19 pandemic closed schools across the UK for extended periods of time..  Developmentally, this is when children learn the fun of being part of a group. They begin to realise that the world does not revolve around them, that others have different opinions and that there is joy in waiting their turn and letting others shine too.  She was at home alone at this key point in her life.  Her Mum had a smartphone which she needed for work.  Aida missed a key part of her learning – not the curriculum, her Mum did well in supporting her with this – but how to function as an individual within a group. 

She is now missing out again.  By using AI to do all her work (without any adult support), Aida is not developing her metacognition, her resilience in the face of difficulty, her memory and all the wider learning skills she needs to progress.  Nor is she learning the facts within the current curriculum as she is using AI to rush through all her work.  By not allowing her to learn how to partner with AI, Aida’s teachers are inadvertently depriving her of a thorough education at all levels.    

https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/

This means she will not be developing any of the skills that the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 identified recently as being those that employers most value.  By banning AI, her school is not preparing her for the future.  She is being let down again. 

I am an educational & child psychologist working across secondary schools in central London.  I get to work with teachers, children and their parents, spending time thinking about how and what people learn and teach. 

Nationally, schools are grappling with how to introduce AI to their students.  A few are bravely stepping up but with very little guidance from policy makers, and are having to upskill and navigate BIG choices alone.  Some, like Aida’s school are banning AI use completely (for teachers and children).  Most are letting individual teachers do their own thing, if they are interested and keen to partner with AI  they can.  This is creating yet another inequity in education with an unpredictable lottery as to what each child gets to learn and experience. 

We need to develop guidance and training for teachers on how to teach children how to partner with AI, showing their classes how to use it in a thoughtful, collaborative, critical way so that when they leave school they are able to thrive in an AI world.  We need to take note of the skills that employers value and acknowledge that our current fact-recall education system is not fit-for-purpose in this new AI environment.  Children need to learn the power and excitement that partnering with AI gives them access to.  This is not something that the school’s IT department has to lead on but needs to be embraced by every subject in partnership with other schools and with guidance at a governmental level. 

Aida is only going to be 12 once.  This is her time.  We need to step up to make sure this time isn’t wasted so that she and all her friends can get the most out of being at school and go on to live and work happily in an AI world.