School in The AI Era

Last week, I was at a founder drinks event with the UK’s AI Minister, Kanishka Narayan.

Amidst vibrant conversations about capital and compute, I took the conversation in a different direction:

What should school look like in the AI era?

Before Modern Parenthood, I co-founded Founders Academy, a new type of business school for a changing world.

It was backed by Founders Forum, a global network of the world’s top tech entrepreneurs, and together we built an alternative-MBA designed backwards from one singular learning objective:

AQ [Adaptability Quotient]:the ability to adapt to and to thrive in a world that does not yet exist

When prospective learners would join us for a discovery session, I always used to start the presentation with the same question:

If the future of work has radically changed, why hasn’t our approach to education?

We questioned everything from what people learned, how they learned, and the business model that powered it.

Back then, I was asking those questions on behalf of early-to-mid-career adults.

Now, with two daughters, the eldest about to start school next year, I find myself asking the same questions but with a different audience in mind.

A new world brings new choices

Choosing a school for our kids has always felt consequential.

But I think we’re entering a world in which we will face an even bigger choice than which school to choose.

We will also have to decide what type of education we believe in.

Quietly, around the edges of the traditional system, smart people are beginning to redesign school from first principles.

I have friends doing it. Entrepreneurs are doing it. Governments are doing it.

AI is upending education from 2 directions simultaneously:

• The demand-side: AI is changing what knowledge and skills hold value in the future.
• The supply-side: AI is making approaches that were previously impossible, possible.

Innovation in education is a long game.

You don’t know if ‘it worked’ until years, if not decades, into the future. And what does ‘it worked’ even mean. Developing a thriving human is one of the most complex endeavours we will ever set out to achieve, and notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to measure.

But if you’ll allow me — I’d love to put two education innovations on your radar.

Not because I think they are the answer, but because I think they are two of the most interesting and forward-thinking experiments being run in education right now.

I think there’s value in us as parents knowing about experiments like these.

They expand our aperture of what’s possible, whilst also giving us something concrete against which to sharpen our own point of view: what excites us, what makes us uncomfortable, and what does that reveal about the kind of education we believe in…

Innovation I: Alpha School [Reinventing School]

Founded in Austin, Texas in 2014 by MacKenzie Price. Later joined by Joe Liemandt (founder of Trilogy), who is now Principal and has personally invested ~$1bn.

They have radically reimagined the school day. Now ~50 campuses across the US. Alpha reports students performing in the top 1% nationally. 90% say they love school, 50% say they would rather go to school than on vacation.

The key features:

• Learn 2x in 2hrs: Traditional academics are compressed into ~2hrs each morning. Each child learns via 1:1 AI-powered tutoring that is uniquely personalised to their individual level and pace.
• Learn Life Skills: The time saved is reinvested into an off-screen ‘Life Skills’ curriculum that spans 5 areas: Teamwork+Leadership, Storytelling+Public Speaking, Entrepreneurship+Financial Literacy, Relationship Building+Socialisation, Grit+Hard Work.
• Teachers as Guides: Adults are still central to the experience but their role is repurposed. Teachers become ‘Guides’ who mentor, motivate and coach rather than write lesson plans or grade homework. 1 Guide per 6-12 students. Paid $100K+.

What I think is interesting:

• They are unbundling school: School is a bundle of products. Alpha is unbundling them and asking how we do each one incredibly well: software for personalised academics; humans for mentoring and motivation; peers and projects for collaboration and real-world capability.
• Mastery vs. age-based learning: The traditional assumption that 30 10-year-olds ought to encounter exactly the same maths concept at exactly the same moment is increasingly difficult to justify technologically.
• Life Skills not as an afterthought: The ‘soft’ skills of the past now feel like the ‘hard’ skills of the future. I like that Alpha takes them as seriously as traditional academics, deliberately developing and measuring them through real-world experiences.
• Agency over compliance: Traditional schooling often rewards following instructions and fitting into boxes. Alpha flips the script: students help set goals, manage their progression and co-create the curriculum.
• Teacher-as-broadcaster → Teacher-as-coach: Every teacher I know is burnt out. What if technology freed brilliant adults from explaining the same thing to 30 children, so they could spend more time knowing, challenging and motivating each one?

Where I have questions:

• Is an unbundled school better? Academics vs. Life Skills. Teacher vs Guide. What if the magic is actually in learning collaboration whilst I learn calculus? What if I only become obsessed with Ancient Rome because a brilliant history teacher shares my fascination and comes down the rabbit hole with me?
• Is efficiency in academic learning the goal? Alpha uses technology to keep each child in a carefully calibrated sweet spot of ‘desirable difficulty’ — challenging enough to stretch them, achievable enough to keep them motivated. But life rarely serves us problems at exactly the right level. Is there value in sometimes being totally bored, overwhelmed, or lost and learning how to find our own way back into the zone?
• Does the culture scale? Are Alpha’s early successes a reflection of the model itself, or the highly engaged families who chose to be early adopters?

If you’re curious to learn more: Joe Liemandt was on The a16z Show discussing Alpha last week.

Innovation II: Minerva University [Reinventing University]

Founded in San Francisco in 2012 by Ben Nelson (first students in 2014). Backers include Benchmark and Reed Hastings (co-founder of Netflix).

They have radically reimagined the university experience. Now fully-accredited with 1000+ alumni from 100+ countries. Ranked #1 Most Innovative University in the World for last 5 years.

The key features:

• A reimagined curriculum: All students spend Year 1 developing 4 core competencies: critical thinking, creative thinking, effective communication and effective interaction. These are broken down into 100+ Habits of Mind and Foundational Concepts — transferable cognitive tools that are repeatedly practised and assessed throughout their degree. From Year 2, students specialise in a major, with increasing choice and agency each year that follows.
• No lectures: Students absorb foundational material before class through readings, videos and exercises. Class time is entirely participatory — debate, role play, application and feedback — through live, virtual seminars of ~20 students using Minerva’s proprietary Active Learning Forum software.
• No campus: Students live together in Minerva residences and rotate through global cities (e.g. SF, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, London). Coursework and real-world projects are deliberately tied to each location. The city becomes the campus.

What I think is interesting:

• Intentional design: Everything about Minerva is designed backwards from the question: What kind of future leaders do we want to develop for the sake of humanity? Their approach is grounded in a deep understanding of learning science. Technology is always used in service of the pedagogy, not the other way round.
• The focus on the cognitive layer: I think one thing we probably all worry about is that if our children grow up outsourcing their thinking to AI, how will they learn how to think? I like that Minerva focuses first on building a student’s cognitive operating system, then layering domain expertise on top.
• Passive → Active Learning: The limitations of passive 100-person lectures are now well established. Having used Minerva’s Active Learning Forum software myself, I’m a big fan. There is no back row. The goal is for 100% of students to be engaged at least 75% of the time. It arms faculty with nifty tools and real-time data on talk time, hand raises and breakout participation to help make that happen.
• Business model innovation: Minerva questions a fundamental assumption of higher education: that a great university needs to own a campus. Removing that infrastructure radically changes the cost base, freeing resources to be reallocated towards faculty, technology and global experiences.

Where I have questions:

• Can thinking really be codified? I like the rigour of breaking good thinking down into 100+ cognitive tools. But is there a danger in implying that something as messy and contextual as thinking can be distilled into a finite toolkit?
• What do we lose without a campus? The global rotation creates extraordinary breadth, but what about depth of belonging? Campuses bring rituals, traditions, long-term mentors, shared identity. Is there value in staying somewhere long enough to put down roots?

If you’re curious to learn more: Building The Intentional University is a dense but formidable read.

OK, interesting examples. But what do we do about it?

I think as parents our response to this new dawn of education innovation is likely to fall into one of 3 buckets:

I. The Pioneer — “I have enough conviction to experiment.”

You believe the traditional system is no longer fit for purpose.

You’ve found an alternative you believe in, one that you can actually access.

You choose to be one of the founding families to pioneer a new path for future families.

This is a bold and brave move. For context, Alpha had 1000 families at their first discovery event, only 10 took the plunge. Minerva started with 28 students.

Of course, for most of us, location, cost, admissions and the practicalities of daily life will narrow the choice long before our educational philosophy does.

But my suspicion is that it might not be that long until that changes. Both Alpha and Minerva have big ambitions (and big backers) to scale globally.

And here are some other new models worth having on your radar:

• Inspired Edge Academy (London primary, opening 2027)
• Nexa School (AI-powered learning platform, launching 2027)
• The London Interdisciplinary School (London university, opened 2021)

II. The Observer — “I’m interested. Show me the evidence.”

You’re intrigued by emerging models but cautious that new doesn’t necessarily mean better.

For now, you choose to stay within the existing system whilst the evidence accumulates and new models move closer to home.

You stay curious, knowing that what you learn might influence future choices around secondary school or university.

III. The Integrator — “I’m staying within the existing system, but I’m going to integrate the best ideas.”

I suspect most of us will land here. There are 3 levers we can pull:

A) Screen schools differently

Some new questions we might consider asking at an open day:

• How do you personalise learning beyond age and year group?
• What do you deliberately teach beyond academics? How do you know if you’re successful?
• How much of the school day is spent receiving information vs. discussing, applying, doing?
• How do you make the best use of your teachers’ expertise?
• Where do students get genuine agency to initiate things, make decisions and own outcomes?
• How do you use technology? What have you deliberately chosen not to use it for?

B) Influence schools differently

As parents, we probably have more sway than we realise.

We can ask better questions, advocate for new ideas — but we can also get involved.

• If we run a business, we can judge an entrepreneurship competition.
• If we’re a lawyer, we can run a mock negotiation.
• If we have expertise, networks or real-world problems to share, we can help the school create richer learning experiences.

Schools don’t need parents only as fundraisers or volunteers. They can use us as part of their learning infrastructure.

C) Supplement schools differently

It’s interesting that the trend over the past decade has been to supplement school with more school. Private tutoring in London now sits at 45%.

But when I look at the smart folks redesigning school from first principles, they are doing the opposite.

They are spending less time on traditional academics, or knowledge transfer, per se. And more time on helping children develop agency and a robust layer of transferable human skills through real-world projects that help them discover where their unique talents and obsessions lie.

Maybe the examples above give us enough conviction and permission to resist the assumption that more academic instruction is always better.

Instead maybe our role as parents of kids entering the AI era is to help them (though more likely: let them) develop their ‘Life Skills’ outside of the classroom — where they were always meant to be developed — in real life.

Let them make something: a film, an app, a book, a cake, a den.

Let them organise something: a party, a fundraiser, a trip, a family dinner.

Let them be responsible for something: a budget, a purchase decision, planning a route.

We can put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make the ‘right’ decision when it comes to school.

We should of course take these decisions seriously. School matters.

But I also think we can release ourselves from the idea that somewhere out there is one perfect educational path and our job as parents is to find it.

I think one of the best things we can do as parents right now is to stay curious about the question What should, or rather could, school look like in the AI era?

As the Rt Hon Kanishka Narayan MP said last week: It’s a big question, and maybe the most interesting one in all the noise of AI.

Have a great weekend,

Riya