Headmaster's Newsletter Friday 30 January 2026
Dear Parents,
Last week I introduced you to Salmon Khan’s Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing) (2025). We talked about Khan’s views on the inevitability of AI having an impact on education, the guardrails necessary in that process, and the positives that can come from the presence of what he calls an ‘AI tutor’. This newsletter looks at Khan’s counter-arguments to some of the more well-versed criticisms and concerns regarding AI in education.
For example, what about added screentime and the catastrophic effect that smartphones and social media have already had on young people’s mental health? Do we really want to encourage children to look at screens for even longer? To use them as yet another prop for things that human beings used to do? Khan’s answer is that a decent AI tutor actually removes obstacles in the learning process, making education a more efficient and stress-free process, freeing up time for non-computer-based socialisation. This includes socialisation with parents who are no longer used as pseudo-tutors, stressing their way through the evening’s homework, as there is an AI tutor who will do that for them. Meanwhile, if the AI tutor takes on much of the work that would normally happen in school, then lesson time could be more usefully focused on dialogue, collaborative group work, human interaction, and the honing of empathy which Khan sees as being crucial in the twenty-first-century workplace. Teachers can focus more on their own one-on-one or small group interventions. And if students, learning better alongside their AI tutor, feel happier and more successful, they are more likely to cheerfully reach out to their peers, rather than morosely turning in on themselves because they don’t understand what is going on around them – or they have given up caring anyway.
Then there is the issue of cheating. It is already all-too-tempting for students to type their assignment into a generative AI platform, then to hand in an answer that was created in seconds, and which had nothing to do with the student themselves. Khanmigo addresses this by not just giving answers, but coaxing students through a thinking process to get to that answer. Obviously, there are many more AI platforms than Khanmigo, though. Khan suggests that there will need to be changes made to the ways in which schools set and assess work. The classroom could be ‘flipped’ for example, with the generative AI preparation work being carried out before the lesson, with lesson time being freed up for Socratic dialogue, or timed and monitored essay-based assessments or the like. The reality is that it is not a case of if AI enters the classroom, it is what we are going to do to mitigate the risks, and to actually turn the risks into a virtue.
Another major criticism of AI focuses on its negative impact on creativity, as it provides millions of ‘creative’ pieces of ‘art’ that have been designed and devised by an ‘imagination’ in a machine, not in the user’s brain. Khan pre-empts this criticism too. He argues that creativity has always relied on building on existing artefacts and ideas, so why not use AI as just another resource to ‘riff’ alongside? With the exception of unique examples of genius – and even they might not be exempt – Khan notes that pretty much everything that is creative is derivative. AI can be used therefore as a non-judgemental sounding board, an inspiration for new ideas and revisions, which magnifies and accelerates human creativity. It just needs to be used correctly: a tool for inspiration, not plagiarism.
Where do teachers fit in all of this? Is there a danger that in this AI educational revolution, teachers will be discarded, replaced by machines which cost less, don’t have pensions, don’t get ill, and don’t burn out? Khan’s view is that AI will become a teaching assistant, rather than teachers being the assistant of the machine. AI will help teachers devise engaging lesson plans, or provide new working examples, and will provide them a platform to further invigorate their subjects, for example by allowing pupils to have online dialogue with AI-generated fictional characters. AI tutors will also help teachers track students’ progress, and any gaps in their learning, picking up on blindspots or misconceptions that a busy teacher, looking after multiple students, may miss.
By providing this assistance, Khan notes that AI should help counter the ‘professional exhaustion’ which sees there being (at the time of writing) three hundred thousand teaching posts unfilled in the USA, with the country’s average teacher turnover rate being five years. In the UK six in every thousand teaching posts were unfilled at around the same time. Part of this exodus is caused by the bloated and seemingly never-ending proliferation of bureaucracy in education. Well, says Khan, AI should help reduce the time spent on this bureaucracy, so it ‘tackles the boring stuff, sparks creativity, supercharges lessons, and helps educators craft unforgettable learning experiences that light up students’ minds’. As a history teacher, I winced reading Khan’s rather uncharitable summary of history teaching: that ‘for most students history feels “dead”, and they have trouble relating to characters from the past’. His solution is to provide simulations, AI-generated conversations with historical figures, which he claims ‘bring things alive so that students get engaged and motivated enough to want to go deeper’. Perhaps; I’ll reserve judgement on that one.
Khan’s AI tutor would also have additional benefits: students could ask them questions about knowledge or understanding gaps that they might feel embarrassed to ask in front of a class, or even one-to-one with a teacher. And that AI tutor will always be around, even when the teacher has gone home and is, quite rightly, no longer contactable. The tutor’s advice need not be confined to academic work. Could it also give careers advice, for example?
Khan’s vision is an admirable one, and it helps to mitigate against some of the more terrifying potentialities of AI. He notes that there are dangers of large language models ‘hallucinating’ as they present inaccurate information as fact, especially in an online world already feared for its disinformation and misinformation. He also sees that there are potentially data protection issues. But for each danger Khan presents ‘guardrails’ – ways to navigate AI more sensibly and more safely than the Wild West which many of us, probably rightly, see the current world of AI constituting. When used badly AI would very likely produce generations of idle (and therefore unproductive and miserable) minds. He notes a 1984 Newsweek interview in which Steve Jobs said computers were going to be ‘bicycles for our minds’, extending capabilities, knowledge, and creativity. If we just allow AI to do everything for us, then we are taking our feet off the pedals, letting a machine turn the wheels around – and we become physically and mentally unhealthy as a result. Khan’s solution of AI as something that works with us is an eminently sensible one. All we need to do now is convince our students that there is a lot to be gained by using a Socratic AI tutor which guides and coaxes them to the answer, rather than just opening a new window, accessing a different AI platform, and mindlessly downloading that answer.
Have a great weekend, Matt Jenkinson
Many thanks to all those parents who attended a very productive NCSPA meeting on Monday and, slightly in advance, I’d like to thank the committee for all of their hard work putting the logistics of the quiz evening together. Thanks, too, to my wonderful SLT who have put together this evening’s questions. A reminder that this is a sign-up only event as I think we are pretty much nearing capacity in the sports hall.
Congratulations to Tom Neal whose co-edited volume Sicut in Caelo: Sacred Music in Early Modern Italy has just been released: https://www.brepols.net/products/IS-9782503621852-1
The New College Gradel Quadrangles, of which the school is part, have been listed in The Guardian's top 10 best design and architecture of 2025. Appearing alongside V&A East Storehouse in London and Houston's Ismaili Centre, the Gradel Quadrangles were praised for their 'gorgeously eclectic' design and diverse influences. In particular, the article drew attention to the tower on the corner of Savile Road, ‘embellished with carvings of pangolins, moles and moths'.
World Book Day is on 5 March, and will be upon us before we know it after half term. As ever, we will be joining schools around the country in encouraging boys to come in dressed as a literary character (though not one who looks, say, surprisingly like a prep school boy in home clothes). Please do not go to any great effort or expense for this; imaginative and recycled costumes are often the best ones!
Upcoming Events
Monday 02 February 2026 14.30 U13 C&D Hockey v Bloxham, St Edward's
Tuesday 03 February 2026 14.00 U8&9 Hockey v Chandlings, Iffley Road
Wednesday 04 February 2026 9.00 Chapel. Speaker: Mr Tony Morris, publisher and author of 'What Do Buddhists Believe?' 13.30 Interschools Debate, New College (Ends 16.00) 14.00 U11 A-D Hockey v Chandlings, Away 14.00 U13 Hockey House Matches, St Edward's
Monday 09 February 2026 Charity Week begins Start of Year 8/8S PSB/scholarship mocks week Year 3-8 mid-year self-reviews completed and sent home this week 14.30 U13 A&B Hockey v Bloxham, St Edward's
Tuesday 10 February 2026 14.00 U8&9 Hockey House Matches, St Edward's
Wednesday 11 February 2026 9.00 Chapel. Speaker: Revd Canon Rachel Carnegie, Chaplain of All Souls College, Oxford 14.00 U11 A-D Hockey v MCS, Away 14.15 U13 A&B Hockey v Ashfold, St Edward's 17.30 Governors’ Meeting (McGregor Matthews Room)
Thursday 12 February 2026 14.00 U8&9 Hockey House Match Finals, Uni Club
Friday 13 February 2026 Deadline for ABRSM exam entries
Saturday 14 February 2026 Start of Half Term