Leading the Way on AI in Education – Radio Interview with the Principal

As Artificial Intelligence continues to reshape the global landscape, schools face a defining choice: resist the technology or learn to harness it. At Hulme Grammar School, we are firmly choosing the latter, embedding explicit AI literacy directly into our curriculum to ensure our students become ethical, critical, and independent thinkers.

Ian:

“It’s lovely to come into the inner sanctum, as it were, of Hulme Grammar School. And I’m with the Principal of the school, Kirsten Pankhurst. Kirsten, thank you for accommodating us today, because I know we’re going to have a little chat about something really exciting that’s happening in the school with its technology mindset, I suppose…AI!”

Listen back to the full interview (from 6m 30s) > 

 

Q – Ian:

These two letters kind of either strike fear into most mortal hearts or conversely, people are completely comfortable with it. Which do you fall into?

A – Kirsten:

Well, I think that initially it was the fear and trembling, and I think that’s a pretty valid response because all indications are that these two little words are going to have quite a huge impact as time goes on. But the more I’ve been immersing myself in getting to understand AI, both the positives and also how it might pose danger to particularly our young people, which is, you know, that’s why we’re in the business, the more I’ve come to an understanding of how we can try and harness this technology, both for ourselves as a human race, but in particular for our young people here at Hulme.

Q – Ian:

I suppose at a time really when people have been mindful of the planned government strategy to ban social media for young people. Here we are at Hulme with the decision to make AI a core part of the curriculum. What was that first sort of turning point for you? When did you decide to go down this route?

And I suppose another adjunct would be how does it kind of square with that resistance for young people and social media?

A- Kirsten:

I agree that it might seem incongruent to an extent, I think that social media and AI are not the same. It’s important for us to educate young people so that they are able to use whatever is at their disposal. We educate them about alcohol use or consent, for example, well before the age when they would want to start experimenting, so that when they are of an age where they can be using various tools at the disposal, so they do.  And so we educate them in order to do that. So social media, I think educating before using is good. I’m not completely for the ban on the under 16s. I don’t think it’s the right way to do things. And I think actually social media has many benefits for our young people in terms of encouraging their personal connections.

AI, I think, is slightly different. I think it’s important that our young people are taught how to use and taught both the benefits and the dangers of AI. And also the turning point came with the knowledge that they are all already using it. And we all use AI sometimes without even knowing it.

I went into a stadium over the weekend (purchasing some items from a shop) and they said, you just walk out. I said, well, how will it know what I’ve purchased? They said, there’s AI cameras above you! So we use AI and we don’t even know.

We realised actually our young people are using AI. They don’t know what it’s about, they don’t know the benefits, they don’t know the dangers. And it’s our job as educators to prepare them for a life outside of these walls. And AI is going to be a big part of it.

Q – Ian:

So from September, the new school term, it’s going to be a complete sort of embed in the school, I suppose, lots of youngsters that are transitioning from primary school to secondary school life. Will that be kind of a sudden sea change? What will AI technology embedded at Hume look like for that year 7 pupil walking through these doors in September?

A- Kirsten:

One of the first things that happens for all Year 7s when they start here is they get their Chromebook. We’re a Google school very proudly at the cutting edge of technology. And so all year 7s get their Chromebook, which they take with them throughout their journey. It’s quite a proud moment for them.

The moment you open a device like that, AI is already there, so the students will already be able to access AI without us teaching them anything. The decision to offer them explicit lessons in AI is to make sure that we are preparing them for that. For a year 7, the first things that they are going to learn is about safety, about safeguarding, about how to protect yourself.

The misconceptions on AI are really interesting and what was very worrying for us all as educators is the increase in children that are using AI as their friend, as their confidant. They are preferring to use AI as their counsellor rather actual, real counsellors. And that is extremely worrying. The ability for us to teach children that this is not a sentient being – this is merely an algorithm that’s responding to whatever you give.

It is really important and young people will find that very difficult to come to terms with. We need to protect our children, so the first thing they will learn are things like that. It’s about how to keep yourself safe in an AI world, how to protect yourself. Secondly, we’ll teach them about ethics, the ability to decide what is right and wrong, to be able to make those really important discussions, to be part of the conversation about the ecological impact on AI, the impact on our creative industries, the impact on free thinking and independent speech.

And to be able to provide our children with the tools, to be able to join in those conversations, I think is incredibly important and we will certainly be forerunners in that. I think secondarily it’s how you can use AI for your best interest. How can you become a better learner, a more independent learner, a more creative learner?

By using this tool that has been created to serve you rather than you serving it is the way we’re going about it, I suppose.

“How can you become a better learner, a more independent learner, a more creative learner”?

Q – Ian:

The curriculum here at Hume will be as broad and sort of structured as in any mainstream education setting, I guess. What would you say to those people who may be, for example, most traditional subjects of English and History, of which we’ll have a long history here? How are those going to be incorporated into the AI setting?

A – Kirsten:

Well, I’m an English teacher and my great loves are poetry and drama and music and all things creative. It’s my passion to ensure that those industries continue to thrive, continue to bring the most important parts of life.

And so by embedding AI into our subjects, it’s enabling us to ensure that those things continue. The last thing we want is for our young people to be given a poetry homework, write a poem on and they go home and put it into AI. That is what is going to lose creativity from human beings.

And so for us, teaching our children how best to use it, how ethically to use it. And then instead of saying use AI to write a poem, it’s saying, here’s a poem that AI has written. What are the flaws? How can you be more creative? How can you teach AI that this is not a very good poem at all.

Your creativity is far more important than the non-creativity of AI. AI can do an average of everything. That is what it does. And we need to teach our children to be above average in those creative subjects because the human being is more creative than a computer and an algorithm. Every subject does that differently.

Saying, why is your psychology lesson so important? Because it teaches you how about the human brain? Why is drama really important? It teaches you about oracy, it teaches you about being able to communicate. It teaches you about leadership and confidence. We need to continue with our debate. What we are doing is guiding our teachers as well with teaching them how you can structure your lessons with AI so that they don’t take away from the creativity of young people.

We have tasks that are red tasks, no AI allowed. That is the tasks that you complete in class, for example, your exams or writing a speech or writing a poem. And you have your orange tasks where you’re going to use AI and then you’re going to critique it, you’re going to pick out the flaws, you’re going to learn how to be critical with it.

And your green tasks are use AI as much as you like and then we’ll look and see how it benefited you. So teachers will be guided on tasks as well. So every teacher has already had training in that. How do you protect your subject from AI? And how does your subject make the world a better place outside of this AI?

And we’re taking that burden away from them by teaching the children in an explicit lesson, this is how it works, this is why it’s good, this is why it’s bad. This is when you use it, this is when you don’t. And that will enable our creative teachers, our historians, to continue doing what they love without the shackles of worrying about it.

“What we are doing is guiding our teachers as well with teaching them how you can structure your lessons with AI so that they don’t take away from the creativity of young people”.

Q – Ian:

I suspect that your chair of governors (Gavin Wheeldon, CEO of Purple), who has a background of course in AI in his business life, will be really flying high with all this kind of positive mentality from the school that he’s the chair of governors of.

A – Kirsten

Well, he’s (Gavin) been integral to the learning curve. Having been at the cutting edge of technological industries for the last 30 years, he is very much at the forefront of what AI is going to become and what it could become and both the exciting parts of that as well as how we need to protect ourselves.

So he (Gavin) has certainly been supportive in educating all of us. It’s very fortunate for us to have someone like that as our chair and also someone that’s so philanthropic, willing to give so generously of his expertise and of his time to enable us to offer this to our young people. And I think it is, whilst one, it’s an offering, I think it’s also going to be essential.

I’m pretty sure that in a few years every school is going to need to contemplate how to do this. I just feel that we’ve got a one-step advantage from the rest because of Gavin.

Q – Ian:

Well, I was going to ask you about that because obviously with a school like Hulme Grammar, a private school where your fee paying pupils will hopefully expect when they demand these cutting edge initiatives, how will that impact on other schools in and around what is still a very deprived borough in many respects, educational challenges, I’m sure you know far better than I, but how do you think long term, that landscape for mainstream education in the town benefit from things that you’re doing already here?

A – Kirsten:

I think that very practically we’re an outreach school, so our stated aim is to enable all children to achieve their potential within our borough. And that doesn’t mean only the students who pay the fees to come here. We have an extensive bursary programme, for example, but in addition to that, we offer outreach and public benefit.

So in terms of AI and the technical industries, we had over 100 young people from the borough here a few months ago doing the hackathon and that resulted in extraordinarily impressive results. And that was from young people all around here, not just our students. In fact, most of them weren’t (our students). And our outreach programme is exactly that.

How can we take what we have and enable the young people of Oldham to achieve their potential? We work with the council quite closely. We’re supporting them on English and maths tutoring, we’re supporting them in a range of ways, and AI forms part of our offering of our outreach to the local people of Oldham.

Q – Ian:

And if this, Kirsten, for you works as well as you clearly hope, and as so sounding passionate about that, I hope it will work. What would a Hulme Grammar school pupil look like in 5, 10 years time from now? Do you have a crystal ball that big that you can gaze into?

A – Kirsten:

It’s wanting our young people to be prepared for the world outside the doors. And I think that AI is going to change that and the world will catch up and the world will change with it. I think our young people that will have experienced our learning will be at an advantage in that they will be prepared earlier.

But I think it’s with enabling them to be those independent thinkers, the ability to spot the problem. Because a lot of what we do with AI is give it the information and then we say you find the solution and then you have to critically analyse that solution. And what we’re seeing from people at the moment is the thought that if that’s whatever AI is going to give me is the best it’s ever going to be, without being able to critique whether it is their voice, whether it makes them sound passionate, whether it is even correct information.

Preparing our young people for interviews, for example, at university, they will be prepared with their own intellectual thought and creative thinking, not something that’s AI driven. I know universities are worrying about this themselves at the moment. Speaking to some university students and their queries about being able to use AI for their assignments, etc.

And I think if someone’s going into medicine, I’d be quite worried about a doctor that has passed the degree with a lot of help from AI. And so I think schools will be duty bound to educate young people so that the world is a better place and our young people will be able to do that, I’m pretty sure.

And it’s been a really interesting journey for myself. I gave teachers a continuum from I’m completely expert at it as a number one all the way through to I passionately detest AI. I’m never going to get involved and how you can possibly move through that continuum to a place where you’re comfortable and comfortable might be an educated user that prefers their own mind.

And that might well be and is probably going to be the way of most people. But it’s showing people how to do that. It’s making sure our young people are able to write creatively, think creatively and debate. If you are presented with an Oxbridge interview and all of your learning about debate has been from AI, when that professor sitting in front of you asking you to think on your feet, it’s going to be the Hume young person that’s going to impress them the most.

“I think our young people that will have experienced our learning will be at an advantage in that they will be prepared earlier”.

Ian:

“An awful lot to think about, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a brave new world for educators like you. And Kirsten Pankhurst, thank you very much indeed for just enlightening our listeners a little bit about what the future holds for Hulme Grammar School and as we say, hopefully, the wider education system in Oldham”.

The integration of AI at Hulme Grammar School is not about replacing human thought; it is about elevating it. By teaching our students to critique algorithms rather than rely on them blindly, we are ensuring they leave our classrooms with a distinct intellectual advantage. Whether navigating an Oxbridge interview or entering the future workforce, a Hulme education prepares young people to stand out through genuine passion, leadership, and creative thinking.

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Ian Wolstenholme and Oldham Community Radio for visiting us and shining a spotlight on this exciting new chapter for our school and the wider borough.

To learn more about our curriculum developments or our extensive bursary and outreach programmes, please explore our website or get in touch with our admissions team.