Adam Sturdee

This year I led the writing of a five-year digital strategy for the secondary school where I work. I want to share the process, because the way we built it changed my view of what a school strategy document can be. We used AI throughout. Not to invent the strategy for us, but as a research assistant, drafting partner, critical friend and institutional memory. The result is a strategy that is more evidence-based, more coherent and dramatically easier to keep up to date than anything I could...

What Satya Nadella’s thinking on AI means for the future of schools Satya Nadella has made an argument that should matter to every school leader thinking seriously about artificial intelligence. His point was not that AI is powerful. That much is obvious. Nor was it that every organisation should start using it, since most already are, formally or otherwise. His deeper claim is that the future will belong to organisations that build their own learning systems around AI, rather than handing...

“AI readiness is now mainstream.” That is the headline from the latest Bett UK Education Priorities Report, and on the face of it, it is good news. Sixty per cent of educators put AI near the top of their concerns. Policies are being written. Working groups are meeting. Schools are, by their own account, getting ready. I want to offer a slightly uncomfortable thought. Readiness is not the same as change. And in our hurry to look ready, we risk repeating a mistake this profession has made more...