If AI Can Do the Homework, What Should Students Learn?
What do video calls, bank accounts, and smartphones all have in common? They’ve completely reshaped how we live. Just as the smartphone became the key to our finances, communication, and even unlocking the door to an Airbnb, AI is changing how we move and interact in the world.
The question is: do schools have the ability to change or, more nuanced still, the ability to keep up with these changes?
Example for Context
On the Diary of a CEO podcast, Eric Weinstein suggested that even a radiographer, someone who may train for over a decade to reach their position, could see their role made redundant.
The scan could be tokenised, read by an AI agent, diagnosed, and results returned to the patient.
This example makes the point: it’s not just taxi drivers, call centre workers, or bookkeepers who are at risk. It’s also people who have dedicated years of study and resources to reach specialist positions. You want to design your own house, you won’t need an architect soon.
What This Post Is About
This is not about how AI can “help out” education with iPads, whiteboards, or printers.
It’s about asking deeper questions:
What is education for?
Is it just to prepare our students for the world of work?
I believe, AI is a mirror. It is showing us the weaknesses of our current system: a lack of creativity and an obsession with a narrow measurement.
What and Who really makes the decision?
No matter how many clubs or pastoral support a school offers, exam results remain the pillar of judgment. Who can blame them? Parent pressure, OFSTED inspections, and league tables get students into seats and teachers paid.
A student prepares all year, memorises information, and applies it at the end of the year. Repetition, pattern-learning, and a database of knowledge.
Doesn’t this sound familiar? ChatGPT can already do all of this, for £20 a month!
Even beyond AI, many of us have learned more on the job than we ever did in school. Yes, basic skills like maths and literacy are vital, but does the exam process really reflect what students need or the behaviours schools should nurture?
I would suggest: no.
AI has already changed young people’s job prospects. This means we need to rethink the curriculum or at the very least, how we measure it.
So what is the answer?...
Let’s look at three ares:
Things that don’t change
The answer about the future might be hidden in the past
Positives about using AI now and the future
Things That Don’t Change
Some things are timeless: human connection, relationships, purpose, curiosity, creativity, problem-solving, eating and drinking.
Yes, I might now use a video call to talk to my mum, but I still want to talk to her. I might ask ChatGPT a question, but I still have the question.
My point is not to ignore or ban technological advancement but to recognise that our deep human needs will not disappear. This is the space schools should lean into.
Human connection, community and shared responsibility are all deep human structures that have shared the test of time. These things like many others will not go away.
2. Is the Answer Somewhere in the Past?
In School Wars: The Battle for Britain’s Education, Melissa Benn outlines the history of education policy, political games, and church monopolies.
She describes St George’s in-the-East Secondary Modern, led by Alex Bloom from 1945-1955, an educational radical. While most schools focused on tests, punishment, and regimentation, Bloom rejected marks, prizes, and competition.
Michael Fielding calls him “arguably one of the greatest figures of radical state education in England.” Facing severe poverty and post-war chaos, Bloom based his school on three principles:
What does it mean to become a person? Not just a productive worker, but a flourishing human being within a community.
Dynamic vitality: the school constantly tested and improved its practices through ongoing dialogue between teachers and students.
Education as joy: making school more creative, expressive, and human.
Bloom faced the challenges of war and poverty. We face the challenges of abundance and convenience with AI.
Bloom did not believe in tests, competition or rewards. He based his school on the person becoming a person in and through a community, not just an economic number. He saw by the end of primary school many students saw themselves as failures.
I would argue that students today leave primary school still not knowing themselves what they like and what they are good at and what they would like to continue learning. The SATs (Standardised Assessment Tests) preparation has beaten out all curiosity from the Year 6 students and by the time they’ve reached GCSE they don’t know what they like.
Bloom also believed that a school should be governed by Teachers and Students where there is a collective responsibility. Where subjects, teaching tools and school life could be changed through a democratic process.
Finally, Bloom believed that exams etc took the joy out of education. Schools should be a creative expression of a community and not a dogmatic, systematic linear conveyor belt.
The question is :
How do schools ground themselves in strong principles while adapting to a changing world?
We, like Bloom, have to adapt to the world around us. Bloom was able to ground his school in a set of principles that were dynamic. The purpose of the school did not have an academic focus but a person focus. There was no measurement in how much you could remember but a shared responsibility to each other.
3. Positives About Using AI now and the future
This is not a post to batter AI in fact, the opposite. I think AI is a fantastic tool.
Teachers can quickly generate differentiated resources for students who need extra support or greater challenge.
Children could read daily to an AI tool that helps with pronunciation and complex words.
Teachers could save hours of planning time and focus more on connection and creativity.
The possibilities are endless, and I encourage all teachers to experiment with AI for personalised and individual improvements.
In a later post I write about how AI and Bloom could create a hybrid model of learning. But for now let's stick with this…
Continuing to teach the curriculum with AI is not enough.
The curriculum itself needs to change or the measurement of it.
Final Thoughts
Simon Squib, a YouTuber on a mission for people to “follow their dreams,” believes schools are producing robots: “Students are leaving school not knowing anything and not knowing themselves.”
I believe AI can and should be embraced by schools. But the real issue is how we measure education.
We need a system that adapts in real time, reflects the world of work, and, drawing on Bloom’s inspiration creates a model of shared responsibility, where teachers and students learn with and from each other.
Change is not simple. Some schools have more flexibility than others. But whatever the context, transformation will only happen if head teachers, parents, and students all back the shift.
Perhaps the footsteps of Alex Bloom are worth following, not just for a post-war world, but for a future AI one.
