Latest / Let Them Fly - Heather Harries Ed Hub / Russell Cailey education without borders.

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Russell Cailey education without borders. · Let Them Fly - Heather Harries Ed Hub

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Let Them Fly with me, Heather Harris.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you've ever wondered whether your child is on the right path, this podcast is the one for you.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Each week we explore the ideas shaping the next generation.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: And today I'm joined by Russell Cayley, an educator and futurist who's helping schools rethink what learning should look like in a rapidly changing world.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: From AI to creativity and curiosity, we're asking what today's children need to really thrive tomorrow.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Russell, welcome to let them fly.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Lovely to be here.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's really nice.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, we've caught up before.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think the last conversation we had, you were you'd written a book?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I had, yeah.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was about a year ago, exactly.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I can't believe that time.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us a little bit about that book before we start.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, so the book was a goodness, it was the reflection of probably about a 12 or 13 year journey.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And after I joined the world's first traveling school, which most people anyone who knows me watching the podcast will know that I was part of.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, I had some incredible experiences moving around the world.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then it was, and I've shared this on a podcast, so even though it's quite personal, I don't mind sharing it.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um is actually a love letter to my dad.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So my actually my dad got fairly sick recently, and I'd realized that I'd rarely shared the stories about traveling the world, what I'd done.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, it was kind of a love letter to him.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was obviously about how we survive in this age of AI and this world of disruption, but embedded within the book were these little caveats, these little stories about what I'd done around the world, and it was just a window for him in a in a in a way.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I so I wrote the book in a way, and this was in my mindset for the whole time of writing it.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: If he walked past it in an airport, would he pick it up?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the idea.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't want it educatation or too based in our world.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted it in the world of the regular person at an airport stand who might pick it up.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: He had heard about AI before and picked it up.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it was it was it was the journey um with the traveling school, things I'd seen around the world, really bits of humanity, a bits of being human that that I'd seen around the world.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then I wanted to reflect that back um to my parents, my to my mum as well, but but it was it was the heart of it was was uh yeah, a love letter from my dad.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And what did your parents think of the book?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Did they read it?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Boring.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no!
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: He said he's very blunt, my dad, he's he's a very blunt author.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So no, he enjoyed it.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: He said, he said, son, it's um it's a bit dense in places.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, it's fine, dad.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: But no, you know, they they enjoyed it, and um, I had a few printed outs that'd been handed out to their friends, so I think that they're a little bit proud, which was which was which was nice, and that was the main audience.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, so the book was a great experience.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um awesome publisher that I that I did it with.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was just something I felt I had to do for as it was calling me for a few years, and um, as we were talking about off air, you know, the pandemic kind of gave me a bit of a kick up the butt to to to to to do these things.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So um yeah, yeah.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a nice, it was a nice end to that arc of my career.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um the the traveling aspect and um entering the new arc, which is much more about the new companies and that.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So so it felt a natural uh end to a part of my life which was which was which was important.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: So you mentioned earlier on about traveling schools.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Explain more what that actually means.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: So in 2010, I'd uh reached out to someone as part of this new project, the world's first traveling school, it's called Think Global School.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we had a few conversations in and around a potential job, potential position, didn't really go anywhere.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was a job advert, and within about, and this is not a lie, within about an hour of the lunch break at my old school, three people had approached me with this job advert who were all unrelated, didn't know each other, and had put it in front of me and said, You've got to apply for this.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And as I look back now, it was either they really wanted me gone or it was they they thought I was a good fit for this job.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so I I had the most insane um recruitment experience I think ever.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I flew to Thailand for a day and flew back, uh, ended up in Germany for a couple of days, and yeah, I joined this new project called Think Global School.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was a huge move at the time.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was one of the first schools really talking about doing education differently.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, after after, you know, a few movements, I think earlier in, you know, early in the century, maybe you know, pre and post-World War II, education largely settled down into set models.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think TGS, along with probably UWC and Green School at the time, where I felt some of the forerunners of trying to kind of begin this very early disruption that I would char around 2008, 2012.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I joined the school, quit everything, my job, my pension, my mum was devastated.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're not the best risk takers, my my parents, and I joke about this with them.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, got on a flight to Argentina.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, everything dropped, everything abandoned, and that was it.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: That was the start of this journey.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, were you originally you were a traditional teacher?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, traditional.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: And what were you teaching?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, my history was sociology.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: We were beginning the potential prototyping of an IB launch.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I was part of that, which never actually went ahead, but I was part of the team that was was beginning to think um from my old school what what could be outside A levels, but really my bread and butter was sociology and then prepping T O K and history for the potential IB program.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that was that was the and then you moved from so when you moved from traditional sit in the sit in rows, teach classrooms, and you moved into global school.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what was the difference?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: What did you feel in terms?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: What what was the difference as you saw?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it wasn't crazy initially for the first two years we were actually in IB school.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't like we were we started flipping tables from the get-go, that came later.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a nice and looking back, you know, there were just things that I had to get used to.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: You have to get used to travel, you know, setting up a new home every few months.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: You have to get used to, all right, where's the supermarket I'm gonna use?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Where's the gym?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how am I gonna navigate a city without a car?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there was just some basic things about being this nomadic educator that I had that I had to get used to, and that was quite a nice bedding-in period for two years.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Then we flip tables.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So around 2014-15, we began to design, build, prototype the change maker curriculum, and that launched around 2015.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: So there was this kind of crazy period of traveling nomadic existence, which was still within a pretty traditional framework.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was this crazy, okay, we're gonna really disrupt education, and and that was the journey.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't it wasn't quite radical at the start, 2012-ish, but by 2015, we'd actually got quite a radical philosophy uh beginning to bed in.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And how does that work?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you literally travel with kids.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we would travel with the students, so you would accept them as a normal boarding school, and then those 40 or 50 students would then travel with you.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: They would and they would go back to mum and dad for a month between terms.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if if I think of my time, my first year as principal uh on the Changemaker program, it was Botswana, India, Japan, and Greece.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, and then this the breaks were staggered in between them.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we had to re-redesign the calendar as well.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Couldn't do the calendar that we're all used to, that long summer, that wouldn't have worked.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we had to redesign that as well.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then we we actually realized that the American curriculum was a better move for us within this kind of design.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we moved away from IB and then into the American, and they were great.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: We we partnered with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, Wask, and they really let us sandbox a pretty radical idea, and we worked very closely with their team.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't just like we went out there and started, you know, playing with fire, so to speak.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: We we did do it carefully we sandboxed the idea very carefully with Wask at the outset, and then by 2023, I think it was it it won most innovative curriculum.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's amazing.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I absolutely am so behind you, and I just love the fact children travel and experience so many different cultures and their learning is still happening.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: What sort of parents sort of sign their children up to that?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say probably two, probably two types, and there's more mixed in, but for but for the purpose of this, I would say two.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: I would say they you've got on one hand, you've got quite entrepreneurial parents.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they are in the business world, they have read the tea leaves, they can see education, you know, they they've already got wind of things like VR, AI, and this is back around 2016, 17.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: So some of these things, you know, big currency shifts like blockchain, the markets beginning to move.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say these parents were largely um quite futurist and quite frontier thinkers, um, quite quite business oriented.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the other hand, I think you had parents who were desperate, parents who had seen their children struggling within the four walls.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted more for their children in in their education experience.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I and they came to us for different reasons.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then some was completely out of the parents' hands.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you would not believe the amount of interviews I did where the parents would come on, because we interviewed the parents, and they would say, Oh, I had no idea they were applying.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is the first time I'm hearing of it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the student had decided to apply, and then at the moment the parents had to come into the process, then the parents were like, I had no idea this is happening.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the the the student would then say, Yeah, by the way, I've I'm thinking of going traveling the world with this traveling school.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that wasn't also unknown either, that the student had just applied off their own backs.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And how long do the students traditionally stay in the program?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say between two and three years.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: We we we prototyped different lengths.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think we have four years for a while.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I felt that was too long.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I I I felt by the time I left 2023, two, 2022, sorry, I would say two years, I thought was was was the best.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they join you at what age?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: What's the sort of so it's high school?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: So again, it shifted, but when I was there, it was grade 10 to 12.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it was it was yeah.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: We we felt we were a little too young, to be honest, a bit early.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because it is, you know, you it's it is you you you we we're out in the field in Botswana, yeah, and places like Panama, you know, we the school after I was there went to went to other places.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you you've you've got to be kind of careful, you know, that safety is obviously a huge part of wherever we scout or scout it to go.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so that was that was kind of my experience within Global.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was a great decade, and I think, you know, I look back of who the educator I was when I left versus the educator at the time I departed.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think any other experience could have shifted my mindset, my philosophy, um, what I truly value um if it wasn't for such a radical, crazy experience.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it it is, it you can't imagine, I can't imagine somebody coming up with that idea and going, oh, we're gonna travel the world and take kids with us, and parents are gonna buy into it.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: It really is totally out-of-the-xinking.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we we I'm quite proud that we kept, because to me, it would have been easy just to travel, sit back on the travel and do nothing really with the curriculum.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, travel's enough.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I I what I'm most proud of, I think, is is the boundaries we pushed.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we were doing AI modules back in 2018 in Beijing, you know, very basic chatbot concept, but we were still doing it.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: VR we did in Japan between Hiroshima and Tokyo.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: So even though I look back a decade and some of the modules and some of the challenges the students were taking on, I think we were probably five or six years ahead of their time.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really proud of that, that we didn't just sit back on the travel, we actually did push a lot of boundaries and frontiers with the curriculum and with the assessment.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I again one of them one of the things I've given more talks on than almost anything is how we built our assessment out because we we could see even a decade ago that sat in a room for three hours, um, I don't think we quite predicted how AI would do it, but we did predict, I think that three hours in a room was not the best way to necessarily judge a young person.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not saying that that can't be part of the package, but we just wanted more than that.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: We wanted extra layers, additional layers onto it.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think I've never seen so much um kind of movement with people at the moment to change education.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: It just seems everyone's just recognizing that education's outlived the traditional education that we've we've got in classrooms, has almost outlived its purpose.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the there's a real groundswell of people wanting change in a big way, I think.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think so.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we've we've got two, I think we've got two worlds coexist in, which I'm I'm constantly fascinated by.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've got the reimagination, which anyone who's seen anything I post online, I'm I'm quite I think I was a fan at first, but it I I think it it wore pretty thin on me, you know, a few years ago.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's yeah, yeah, okay, we've reimagined enough.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so I think we've got those people who endlessly reimagine, and there's a place for that.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've also, I'm finding my I found myself for the last few months really fascinated by those who execute, those who design, those who take a risk, those who might create an incubator or a pilot, um, and and really go for it.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think I I completely agree with you.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we've ever seen it so disrupted.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And what I'm hope for now is we see a little more execution.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think we can't live in this constant cycle and loop of imagination.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I think that the danger is that everybody wants change.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody's putting change in that's going to lead through to the danger with change is that if the top end's not changed and the employment world still wants five GCSEs and a standard 3A levels, what happens to those children that have pioneered change?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: They've got this sort of loose area once they graduate or once they do whatever, where they're unemployable because they haven't got those traditional qualifications that employers are still looking for.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's how do you facilitate change from top and bottom to kind of meet in the middle to meet these children as they leave school?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: But but I think also right now we have um young people have tools at their disposal that we've just never had before.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how many young people now through places like Y Combinator, other venture studios, are now creating businesses in 18, 19, 20?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, look at the team that built Lovable, you know, they're raising insane money.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean, I've never seen so many venture studios, a capital investment now.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I think also this job market has massively been disrupted now.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And this idea that people are just gonna sit around in your company for 40, 50 years like our parents did, I think those days, they're probably not gone, but they've definitely been getting stretched.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And now this with the technology we've got, I think young people now are beginning to create companies, they're beginning to showcase ideas with the capital investment that we've just never had before.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: So this idea of of what you can potentially do as an individual, how you can run a marketing team, a hiring team, all through agents and AI is insane.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think those um holding on for the for the for the good old days that someone will come into your company, you know, do what they're told.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: They've long gone.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: They've long gone.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think people can outthink.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think the danger is that you've got the one school of parents that are saying, we don't need education anymore because we've got AI, which isn't true because AI only works if you've got an intelligent operator.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you get those skills?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the danger is that, but but what we don't need is children to remember an encyclopedia of knowledge because they've got more knowledge at their fingertips than anyone ever before.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the change, the change is it, it I sit there and I can't, I can't imagine the change anymore.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it scares me a little bit because the potential is so vast.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is, it's it it it's so vast.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just to give you an example, um, because you know, we have two verticals right now.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: We have our curriculum design studio and then we have our AI um kind of software studio.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And what my teams will put together and then say, okay, just use this.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I give you an example now.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have agents within our workflow that will just do tasks for us.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if I want a marketing asset to put to put out there for a conference that we're hosting, you know, design it, it will do it.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I know I can do I can do that in Claude, but but I I think as well, we we're very protective over our IP and our you know internal knowledge.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you can have these agents now that that are creating hiring plans, creating assets that are just at your fingertips.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this would have taken me three years ago.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not not that long.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a great graphics team, but I've still been waiting probably a few days, if not a week, for them to get some concepts over to me now.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Within seconds, I can have, and these agents know our internal workings, they know our brand guidelines, they know they know the language we use.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it it's it's really quite phenomenal where we are right now and the possibilities.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes they can be a little overstates because the human judgment has to be there, and that's key.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think we figured that out at all.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: No, uh it's I think the problem is as well, is that oh, Claude says this, therefore it's correct.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not always the case.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's becoming an over-reliance on AI, and AI can only improve if we improve.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's that's the first thing.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: But tell me, Russell, I haven't actually touched on what are you actually doing at the moment?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we have so once I left the travel in school, we uh set up our own uh curriculum design studio.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we work now with school groups, ministries across the world to help them.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I say help them move from A to B.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not like we go in there and go, hey, create this new new school.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we did.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: That was our journey.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not for other people.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, right now we're working with some quite big schooling groups on, we're doing quite a lot of the things in like sandboxes, incubators, taking a small part of the curriculum and then redesigning within that, getting some hard data.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is this working?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is it not?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: If it's working, okay, let's scale it up and and and expand it out a little more.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's our Elham Curriculum Design Studio.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of the most exciting projects we're working on right now is Dalton, which is a school in Hong Kong.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: We designed the middle school for this group and we launched that.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be out there next week.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll be launching the high school over um the next few months, which we're super excited by because the middle school is a physical school.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's a physical school, and my team has built the curriculum.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: We call it the software within a school.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And because for a long time I felt, you know, and I feel this in Dubai a little as well.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the hardware is great, you know, we have these great buildings, we have these great schools, but what are we doing in the software?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Agree.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, and we don't want to create these kind of white elephants that just sit there.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: It I agree.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the software's from the 70s, you know, it's you can't do that.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem is the school is so parents going to schools as well, and there's a slight tanshint, I guess, but parents going to schools, they go, Oh, it's amazing.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: The pool, the football pitch.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the reality is they use the football pitch once a week, but the teachers stood in front of them and what they're teaching is more important than anything else, and the way they're teaching it.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't, when you do a school tour, that's not the bit you see.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, and I think the honeymoon is there, you know.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: You you see the swimming pool, you see the football pitches, you know, and that's great for a few months.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I think parents eventually, okay, what do we do?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, who wants to, you know, you promised me this, but I'm getting this.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I do see that as a big problem.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was one of the themes that did come through the book in many interviews that I did.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I cannot deny because it was so powerful within the research, was parents, and I talk about this at length in the book, um, about the jargon that institutions will use.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think it's a problem.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: I understand why it's happening, I get it.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Schools want to project the idea that they're future facing.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're doing all this cool stuff with AI.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is that we we we, you know, I over two, three years of research, parents fed back very clearly to us, we were promised this, but we got this.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: The marketing was too far ahead of the software, basically.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a big problem.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think we we can't we can't manipulate parents just to project the idea that our school is future ready.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think we have to have a bit of, you know, what's the word?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think we have to be honest about it.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think integrity, because actually we we're all all the schools are throwing these these words out, but are they delivering them?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think anyone's really checking.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Out of interest, because you're obviously operating globally now, which countries are pushing the hardest to change what's being taught in schools?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think the US, if I'm honest.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I think when I look and we've conducted so much research globally, you know, whenever we work with um a significant project, we'll always benchmark what's out there that potentially aligns to what we're about to design and build.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if I look at some of the schools that we found within the US, there's obviously the alpha model, but I think there's deep deep in that, you know, one of my favorites is New Vu out of Boston, you know, like a real kind of gritty design studio.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I love that school.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's great.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's schools up in San Francisco that that I think are pushing some boundaries as well.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: And what sort of changes are they looking to make?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think if I look at New Vu, they're very much built with the with the design aspect.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: So if you look at the design process, they're really heavy on the building, the designing.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, students get Their hands dirty, okay, but you know, building things.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so look, we'll look at what we host here in Dubai, Emirates Towers, you know, the prototypes for humanity project.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would say things like that, you know, they're building solutions.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's a physical.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you might have a software element on the back end, but these are physical solutions that can do some good.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I I see a lot of that.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, obviously, there's the obvious ones like project-based, more place-based learning.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but I but I think it's what excites me is those those schools that are building those kind of gritty design labs.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: That really excites me when you see the students not just, again, endlessly reimagine things, actually building them.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and very important because I think we're forgetting skills with hands.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely building the hardware, you know, to uh and and that's key.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it could be an electronical component.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we did it at TGS, we did things around um boats and Bluetooth and uh connecting them and how that might look.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so yeah, the software aspect is great, but there is also a hardware aspect that I think schools can plug into.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, students just really love what we found over the years at TGS was with students and and we we're building this into the Dalton project, is students love showcasing their work.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: They love building these prototypes and showing it to the community.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's something nice in that as well, that you can end these um these experiences with some really cool, um, really cool physical things.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think the I think the problem is that a lot of education these days is missing an outcome.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you can sit for you know weeks and weeks and weeks, books filling copy books, but you've got no physical outcome to show for it.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, if all if the only outcome a child has is their exam result, that's quite a sad state of affairs.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, I mentioned the assessment before.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things we work with um with with our partners around the world is is looking at how we deepen, it's like you you said how deepen those assessments um designs and and builds.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: So for example, you know, where would the where would the portfolio come come into the mix?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we do a lot of work with our partners around the what we call the process portfolio.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: How does a student chart their journey?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and how does it bed into that portfolio the competences that they're tackling?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the end of that, we used to do quite a rigorous interview.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: So again, you might have the exams, you might have students tackling in in our case, it was the APs, you might use, but but where the project-based learning was embedded, we we had the portfolio approach, and then we had the interviews.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then we found that those two additional layers were quite were very powerful.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: We could go on talking forever.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, we are on a time scale.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you'll have to come back because I just feel like there's so much we can dig into.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: I have one final curveball question, and I'm really looking forward to your answer on this.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Knowing everything you know about education, everything you know about life that you've learned so far, if you could go back to your seven-year-old self, what piece of advice would you give him?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's crazy you asked that question because I was literally hand on heart, I was literally tackling it.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: So me and my mother went down a bit of a rabbit hole about a week ago, and we got some of my grandfather's old images out.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was really cool because the boat he traveled on to Singapore on in um 47, we put it into AI.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: No way, and it gave us, so we kept that, so it actually gave us the story of his which I never knew.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: My granddad passed when I was about 16, and they actually lived next door to us, so we were very close.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um, there was just things, so his journey from basically France and through the Nile into Singapore, and then AI basically gave, he couldn't give obviously give my granddad's experience, but it gave then the experience of a traditional solar soldier who would have been on that journey, landed in Singapore, and then he he was part of the expeditionary force who tried to um basically calm Malaya and the Burma region after the end of the Second World War.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: So he gave this whole story about what he would have been doing and what the what the project was, and it was just fascinating.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I was really you know, you you get into that phase where goodness, I wish I asked better questions.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's hard to pull that on a seven-year-old.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but but I think if I was going to go back to my seven-year-old self and ask the question at his simplest, I would have said ask the people you care about the most questions.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than when you're you know, when you're a kid, you're at million miles an hour, you don't really inquire.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, it's one of the pieces of advice I would love to give my niece next time I see her when I get to back to Manchester is I know it doesn't feel cool right now as uh she's sort of 13, it doesn't feel important now, but ask your grandparents some questions.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Ask because you won't have them forever.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's absolutely.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: I would say, yeah, so seven-year-old self, just ask questions.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, um, Russell.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: We will have your link in the bio and um we will definitely do this again.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Pleasure.