0:00 – Intro
0:32 – Why Teachers Are Moving to Dubai
6:23 – Becoming A Freelance Editor
19:20 – Home Alone Movie Breakdown
22:09 – Phone Being Banned In UK Schools
34:00 – VAT and Private Schools
38:27 – Private School Entry
49:16 – Can AI Replace Teachers?
1:00:03 – Outro

Intro

hi guys welcome back so we have reached the end of season 3 preer and I have been sifting through last year’s podcastto find our favorite bits key thoughts and the most valuable insights our guests have had to offer if you’re newhere this is the education Lounge podcast where we discuss all things education whether it is politicaltechnological or controversial so let’s get into [Music]it the education Lounge podcast

Why Teachers Are Moving to Dubai

C in our first clip we welcome back jubba who you may remember from previousepisodes back from Dubai we get to the heart of why so many teachers are choosing to leave the UK and move toteach in Dubai out of people that you know and out of people that have Tau here with us yeah you’re not the firstone to move over to unfort or even just to leave teaching ingeneral what’s going on with that why what what’s the reason just the stuff you spoke aboutearlier it’s got to come down to workload you know it’s just if you want to be a good teacher you have to put inthe hours and there’s not enough hours in the day there the schools are working they they keep talking aboutwork life balance but they don’t provide the opportunities to give you that PPA is cut down you know expectations havegone up every year um and like in Dubai they give you that time to do it so whenI’m working and I finish at 4 it’s because I get 2 hours a day out of class and additionally I get other time aswell so I could do my planning if I’m doing plan I could do my printing now I get my resources printed weeks inadvance here it’s a daily mission it’s a daily nightmare every day and it doesn’thelp that the teachers we don’t get paid for working those hours you know the the money is not the worst but the moneydoesn’t it’s not enough for the hours that teachers are putting in I don’t think I think if there needs to be moreof an incentive to teach here if you’re going to do the effort there need to be more of an incentive it’s not there’s not enough incentive to put in the A andkeep working and keep grinding how would you fix the UK moremoney pay the teachers more money no it’s about it’s about um giving moretime time over money to be fair the time to do things properly the time to getyour work done during working hours there’s no reason why any teach should be coming at 7: leaving at 6 and goinghow to do work so what if you had someone that helped you this is it this is it ta T not t you know having we usedto have a in my old school weed to have two classes about three teachers which took the took a weight off a lot of tooka lot of stress off CU that teacher can do the planning do the resources and it’s really helpful cuz that’s not onlyhelping the children but helping the teacher as well you know cuz that takes a lot of stress off finding ways findingways to give the teacher more time during school hours to do what needs to be done as post it outside of school cuzthere’s this expectation they just do at home you could you could just also AI can helpbecause like for instance if you if you get data on like a child’s test orsomething like that or whatever you can just get it to you can feed it into something that can analyze those resultsand then turn our report think think you a step by step breakdown of what to do next as well you know I’ve actuallystarted using a for reading planning really good T the text say give me threeretrieval questions for year four children boom done three inflence questions you don’t even have to thinkabout these things yeah you got to check it you got to check it but like looking at looking at textand trying to find an inflence question that the chat and answer struggle before I use it all the time I use it almostdaily yeah to come up with stuff so this the teacher should be training using AI that should be a now that we’ve got itit should be the talk it straight away that teach should have training on this this is aI know Catherine does uses it quite a lot to she’s she’s quite a happy Teacher you know I new CU she’s new I wonder howmany years she’s got in no but she I think she’s more happy this year because she’s they’ve sort of she’s not asstressed cuz that was his first year but I think she had like a a higher workload than most people would in in her firstyear but then I don’t know they seem they got a new head in or something like that and I think it’s all aboutleadership because the big thing that I’ve like when I was at primary school and stuff like that like it was not agood school and then leadership changed over time and now it’s a good school soit so much of it boils down to it’s all about leadership you know II would look at some schools um that have a high turnover and you know they’ve got poor leadership but they’vegot three or four in this country you got three or four vac in the same school you don’t want to apply for that school at all why are they all leaving the goodschools don’t lose teachers yeah the schools that have got good leadership good balances they don’t they don’t havevacancies you can’t you can’t get in I think that’s true with any company as well it’s like like for instance here Ithink we retain people yeah yeah you have got good do so it’s differentyeah you’ve been working here longer than most people yeah most most ofour I think most of our chers though have been with us for quite long quite a sizable man ofsign yeah I think we’ve got stuff in place tomake them as comfortable as possible to to do their their job like cuz you cuz what it is you make it easy for the chedon’t you they don’t have they don’t have to do too much not they can teachis essentially they can come in and and you got the stuff there ready you have if you put them said you have to do thisand this in addition to to that yeah most classes they don’t have to plan yeah because we’ve got our ownbooklet and curriculum sorted it’s just it’s the delivering of the class and some admin and register and whateverelse it’s easy it’s easy simple stuff so that’s where they stay you know can’t complain Juber mentioned Ai and how allteachers should be trained on how to use it and have it in their Arsenal we’ll be coming back to that idea a little laterin this episode this clip is taken from my episode with Andrew our school friend

Becoming A Freelance Editor

and video editor we learn about what it takes to work in his industry this excerpt reveals how important a basiceducation in mathematics and English can be in a career that seems to be completely unconnected as even Andrewhas to apply mathematics in his video editing to account for drift what’s your opinion on how usefulum like the stem subjects how what like cuz obviouslyyou’re good at like writing English whatever else like how how much that carries through into the the creative umjourney I think if you’ve got a baseline if you’ve got a baseline which I think maybe a May gcsc will get you up towhere you roughly need to be you know you just need to be as a a communicator writtenCommunicator you need to be at a certain level otherwise you seem less qualifiedmaybe than you are even that might not be true if you have really poor grammar or if you’re you know if you’re a bit all over the place in an email it cancome across really badly obviously I think maths is obviously important I would be better at my job if I wasreally good at maths I was going to say cuz when I’ve been editing there is there’s maths involved in that I I meanthe great thing is you’ve got a calculator on your phone so you can do a lot of the you can do a lot of the mathsthere and you can also ignore the Maths for a little bit and just be a be more more shapes sort of editor more sort oflike then I guess you need to know what to type into the calculator as well yeah if you have to divide the number of frames by the number of whatever youknow which just eyeball it just guess what what’s where’s some instances whereit would have been useful to know a bit more MTH I’m interested I don’t I obviously don’t do this uh when you’redealing with sound mixing and sound to frame rate you know the frequency themarrying that with you know that would be really useful it’s in troubleshooting as much as anything so if you if you cantroubleshooting that thing and fudge it and you can modify footage and you can modify sound so that it adapts a certainC uh speed so they can be lined up most of the time today’s editing softwareit’s pretty automatic you can Sy you know if someone’s done their job correctly in the sound recording Department it should be a breeze uh whenputting all together but if something goes wrong the maths is important then and the maths of how it lines up and whysomething’s drifting why something is at the wrong frame rate for the sound you know that can be that can be a bit of itI’ve had that before yeah yeah several times I didn’t know how to fix it I didn’t I didn’t know that’s what the problem was obviously I didn’t I’venever I mean I I I just go forward where there’s like a gap in the talking or whatever and then realign and I just doseveral realignments yeah it’s happened in previous early podcast out of editedit’s a problem it can happen yeah I was confused by that I was like why is it why is it drifting yeah yeah so it’s aframe rate issue it’s frame rate versus uh speed of speeded speed of sound yeahyeah time yeah yeah time so so you you’ll see you’ll see and you can conform them and but you know obviouslythat can pitch that up or down depending on whether you’re you know so the first time I found it was when working with usfootage because that’s 23 that’s 2997 near enough 30 um and UK is 25 andthe conversion to that meant that us stuff sounded likethis so so you know you have to fix that and you’ve got to or you’ve got to get someone who knows how to fix that andit’s often about being able to verbalize that’s where the stem stuff comes back you’ve got to be able to verbalize thatto somebody you can’t just be internally knowing what that is you need to be able to exter externalize that I actuallythink like English is the most important thing but to know because becauseobviously communicating obviously basic maths very important but but Englishactually continuing to improve your communication it’s very importantyeah I mean the reason I ask is I’ve spoken to students here who have um who have said oh you know they’ve been in amath class and English class or whatever they’re like they’ve made like a one-off comment of like oh I’m not going to needthis I’m going to be going into like advertising or I’m going to be going into into media whatever I was like orlike there’s a girl at Lon that was going to go into like fashion orwhatever fashion cooking yeah like you know I’m I’m I’vehad it a few times I’m not going to need this like I don’t need this level of Maths for whatever and I’m like you do realize that when you’re editing a videoor when you’re trying to get ratios of of like address to work or whatever elseyou need to know how to do maths yeah like you you’ll be really surprised howhow yeah like applicable it is applicable it is to to everything everyjob it’s like if I read like cover letters and TVs if I see like a certainnumber of mistakes in in it I’m not going to no I’m not going to bring that personin isn’t it especially for something like J in but I think it would apply across the board yeah because you’relike you didn’t take time to check the sort of Basics and it shows a lack of care a little bit as well because I meanmost of these programs have little red squiggly lines that tell you that you’ve made a mistake you know often um so itdoes show a little lack of care as well and of thoroughness that’s you knowtroubling yeah and that’s pretty important being an editor you know being sloppy it shows eventually will comeup this next clip is taken from the same episode Andrew gives our students and viewers some great advice to anyonelooking to go into a creative career and whether it is worth going to University or not if you had like a young persongoing into your industry or looking to go into your industry we have got obviously a lot of like people who like16 17 18 yeah um obviously they’re looking for what their future careermight be or maybe they’re not and they might not have considered it at all what if you had to like give them some advicewhat would you what would you say if they were kind of interested um I wouldsay I’d say be clear about what if you if you are the sort of person who knows that you want to be an editor and thatyou want to do that for the rest of your life and that’s your passion on the first not thefirst day but like a couple of weeks into working as a runner because that’s what you’ll be doing maybe in a post house or whatever be very clear aboutwhere you want to be with someone who is a nice person someone who’s a supportiveperson because if you’re not clear about it no one will no one will no one will ask you they won’t know that you want todo that they won’t know that you want to be an editor they might be like oh I don’t know what they want might want towork in production or might want to working you know something else and if you’re clear about what you want to doyou you’ll go further quicker because people will try and fast rate you people people don’t want to block you in mostof the time the good ones don’t so would you say people skills are more like one of the most important things being ableto talk to people being able to get along with people knowing you know yeah I think if you’re likable and enough andand you’re not difficult cuz those things spread around yeah obviously you don’t want to be a doormat you don’twant to be like meable to everything you know you don’t want to be a yes person who disappoints but you want to be yeahapproachable and you want to be a sort of smiley friendly face when someone comes over and says can you do this you don’t want to be the person whogoes no I’m going to go back to my cross word you’ve got to be the sort of person whois and I think open I probably open to learning a lot of different different things because there’s so many skillsinvolved and open to asking questions and and like you don’t know everything pretendingthat you know something and then desperately trying to Scrabble it together can sometimes look really bad like saying you can edit and then run todo a course but I could by the end of the weekend I’m joking that’strue you did it so it’s either AR arrogance or confidence orBrilliance yeah would you recommend going to University would you say give it a skipdo something else on a social I mean it’s different now because we had a different uh amount that we had to payor you know acrude debt we were one the last one of the last years I had the 3,000 is now 9 point something yeah mysister was one of the first years to have the nine um and it makes the decision different I mean it’s it’s kindof theoretical debt some of it but you know it is also real is thereum for the social aspect yeah for for that bit I think the people that I knewwho didn’t go and are my industry they went up quite quickly but they they started outli yeah of course and butthey they regret some bits of it I’ve heard them speak of that I don’t youknow I don’t have that sort of and I the camaraderie and learning something together you know being able to justmess around because there’s no there’s not much room for messing around when you’re working because people need tohit deadlines people need to deliver something it’s not like oh have a play it’s like the cost of failure is lesswhen you’re younger and and when you’re in that sort of student phase you’reallow you’re allowed to make more mistakes and that’s actually very good yeah it’s it’s quite restrictive to go Imean I think a lot of young people now seemingly focuson getting somewhere they need to get somewhere and they need to be driven or otherwise they’re what they’refloundering or something or otherwise they’re not they need to have a side hustle they need to you know they reallydo they speak in these terms it’s almost a bit shocking CU we were more concerned and it’s not good we more concerned injust drinking and chilling out and not you know not doing that which is is not not a not necessarily A Better Way butthe social side of things and being allowed to make mistakes and being allowed to work on something that actually might not have yeah I’ve I’venoticed that I’ve noticed that a lot with like say 15 16 year olds are so I mean they’re a bit crazy too butthey they they’re also impress me a lot like with their level of focus on S oflaser focus on you know I need this uh say work experience I need this job Ineed this I was like when that used to be a thing like a long time ago and weIt’s s of coming back around to that so we were like the leisurely lot that were like yeah I was never likethat like I said I just did did whatever and then whever felt right and wherever I enjoyed and wherever stuck is what Iwent off and and did that’s quite a privileged position as well isn’t it it’s that sort of thing where you’relike well the reason I could do that is cuz I felt like there wasn’t too much risk to it whereas now they might feelthere’s a lot of risk to it there’s a lot of risk to noodling around at University cuz that’s you know 27 Grandin oh and you know if they do a masters more you know yeah not doing the mathson that I know the math but you do I mean even if you’re like that comes back towhat we were saying before even if you are running your own business you need to know about all that sort of stuff cuz that interest compounds and like youneed to know how all that works yeah mhm y yeah yeah I agree with you about the whole university thing I would doublethink it nowadays yeah um knowing what I know now but it’s still a nice threeyears isn’t it yeah I mean I I wouldn’t I wouldn’t change my experience becausepurely for the social side of things cuz I know people that didn’t go some peoplethat didn’t go off to University or they did do University but didn’t move out I think it takes them a lot longer to growup yeah and it is like the sort of the whole end you know means to an end sortof thing well you know okay you’ve got there quicker but have you enjoyed doing that like has that been an enjoyableexperience to get there when it doesn’t really matter if you get there at 24 or 27 it’s probably you know if you’refactoring that threeyear delay doesn’t doesn’t matter that much you know we’re doing a lot of things later anyway we’renot getting married at 21 we’re not the 70s we’re you know we’re in London youknow you things are delayed things can be delayed yeah especially especially if you’re a man so you know you can sortof I think you’ve got to have the freedom to have three years that aren’t as important or aren’t crucial to yourdevelopment that won’t resonate for the rest of your career University won’t it’ll be forgotten about it’s like aline on your CV isn’t it yeah that’s all it is our next clip is taken from our

Home Alone Movie Breakdown

Christmas special about home alone in this episode we consider the childhood classic and the significance of many ofthe film’s characters and tropes We examined the wet Bandits and their role as the archetypal comic villains whilstthey act as the source of most of the drama in the film their ineptitude is hilarious as they are foiled Time AfterTime by Kevin which teaches the viewer that criminal activity doesn’t pay thebandits the wet Bandits what do you think they stand for in themovie um well if we think it’s everything we’re spoken about they don’t have any Community or family that weknow of they are completely isolated that’s true yeah show what could happen if you don’t have all of thatstuff yeah and then they take they’re trying to take possessions of money whatever elseno um none of the work basically none of the moral compass they’re causing chaosas well cuz like I think there’s this bit where can’t remember which one they turns on the Taps like just Tri can’tremember second one is where they steal from the charity shop the kid toy like just causing chaoslike what are you laughing at you did it again didn’t you you leftthe water running didn’t you their sense of fun is just causing pain for other people essentially yeah um sort of wellI think is but I think the um what’s what’s the other there’s Marv and what’s his name um Harry Harry Harry Harry andMarv yeah so Harry wants the monetary stuff that’s what he showedwith a gold tooth at the beginning his kids are still going to school here and I guess he missed the whole family checking what all the lights andeverything like to what time they go off when they can go steal stuff and M’s just there like flooding the place for no reason like turning the Taps on andwhatever else yeah so I think and there there’s like scenes in the ice skating RMA M just like taking people scarvesfor no reason and so I think there’s between the two of them it shows bothsides one that’s just for the chaos and one’s one that’s for the money would you like a scarf we don’twant goods we need cash we need it now you’ve got you’ve got a criminal uminteresting criminal site there’s this thing about like criminal Partnerships and how like two people if you you yougot one who’s very organized and systematic and then one who’s sort of chaotic andunhinged that one was actually one of my favorite episodes of the year look out for this year’s Chistmas special whichis going to be on the movie Elf there has been a lot of talk about phones and their place in schools over

Phone Being Banned In UK Schools

2,000 schools in America have already banned phones is the UK set to follow PRand I disagree I feel there should be an outl ban on phones in school whereas PRthinks their you should be moderated in this clip we disc discuss the balance between phones and human interaction andhow social media has purposely been designed to act like a fruit machine todeliver an unpredictable hit of dopamine whenever you refresh or scroll to thenext video in the feed it’s no surprise the people who invented these thingsdon’t allow their own children to use them what are your thoughts on this whole policing phone us and scorefirstly do you agree it should be fully banned or do you think maybe there’s some place for it I think it well Ithink phone use in schools is probably a massive problem and it’s probably should be bannedbecause it’s just too much of a distraction it’s too addictiveand I think young people use phones too much we all use phones too much we definitely do yeah I don’t think it’s abad thing to to ban them a lot of people say that banning it isn’t the rightcourse of action but I just think what’s the alternative what’s well there’s like dedicated time to use it when when notto use it so I mean people in here are even saying maybe not even have it during break time because you stopyourself actually interacting with the people around you yeah I think it’s isn’t that trueeverywhere yeah I think we shouldn’t when we’re talking with other peopleit’s a distraction so it’s it’s best to not have it at all like if you if you ifyou share any sort of time with anyone else like dinner time or anything like that it probably is better just to nothave your phone anywhere near you during that time like have downtime and I think the school’s a goodtime to actually have that downtime and they’ll go home anywhere and they’ll probably use their phoneswhich isn’t Yeah well yeah yeah um they’ll probably they’re probably stillusing it quite a bit um when they get home they’re texting their friends and that kind of thing M don’t get me wrongI do think it’s a point of it’s important to have a device for a teenager because it’s a source of it’stheir source of connection to other people so which but it ironically makes youmore disconnected I know all these companies talk about uh connecting withpeople is there to connect with family and loved ones whatever but yeah yeah nono but I think it it is also it is it is also a source of connection for otherswell for for teenagers to talk with their friends if they didn’t have a phone then it’s kind of difficult forthem to get in contact in the first place I mean we even when we didn’t havesmartphones you still call up your friends to meet up and that kind of thing you need some sort of level ofcommunication yeah and I think it is surely a f an efficient thing but it’sup to the parents and up to the school as well how much they policethat and I don’t think it’s a bad thing Banning phones I think that’s it hasgenerally good effects yeah which you’re about to talk about so there’s some statistics on thisuh there are yeah I mean kind of obvious schoolswhich ban mobile phones get better GCC grad study findsyeah I mean um kind of obvious but but I was shocking how how much better it waslike one or two grades higher more than half so 52% said they banned phones during the school day but were kept withthe stud in and 36% had a partial banwhere phones were banned in some places by alloud in others the gcfc results of school schools in England with aneffective ban were one or two ra higher compared with schools compared with schools with a more relaxedapproach that’s like jumping from a six to a eight or a seven to a nine or evenpassing so three three to five or four pass or a fail yeah I think I think it’sit’s a big problem I I see the way that young people use phones they’re justattached to them it’s an addiction well I’ve said this before I don’t know ifI’ve said it on the podcast or not but you we are essentially living like cyborgs that’s just an extension of youryour body and your brain it’s not quite yet built intopeople yeah but you do have the ability to listen to any piece of music evercreated watch any video movie ever created find any bit of information everwritten down ever created read any book ever created yeah and that’s justit’s an extension of you at this point when you leave your at home you feel you feel like you’ve left part of you partof your at home yeah which is kind of scary well that shows how addicted weare I suppose to some extent it’s if if it’s so indispensable to to yourlife um do you know what I went on a it was a few years ago now went on a holiday toCuba I had my phone with me couldn’t useit was it liberating I tried I was using it for the first few days and then I was likewhy am I still taking this out I have a disposable camera with me um I have my watch for thetime I can’t send any text messages cuz there’s no signal I can’t get on theinternet cuz there’s no Wi-Fi or signal can’t make phone calls I left it in the draw for 4 daysand it was the first few days I was like crap where’s my oh yeah like ajunkie it really is like that it really is like that but then yeah after like day one or two I was like this is thisis liberating yeah just going to read a book and sit on the beach or like go have a dinner and not cuz everyone thatI was with on the trip I was already with so and even if I got split up fromthem couldn’t contact them so there’s no need for me to carry this around anymore that’s like when we’re in you know whenwe go on our trips Scotland it happens there as well yeahyeah you lose your signal cuz you’re in the the borders and it’s very in betweenmountains yeah like even in the house there’s no wifi it is useful like don’t get me wrong there’s certain things thatI think are pretty pretty useful like you know like Google Maps something likethat when you’re sort of out out there and there is a little bit of signal you get something I download it Off downloadyou have to you have to download it but and I use my phone for that but then for the majority of the time you’re notreally using your phone you just you might use it to take some pictures but how you there L pictures you’re kind ofliving you’re kind of living in the moment a bit a little bit and I think until you get a phone call fromwork halfway up the mountain like I can’t really deal with that I’m the top of a mountain you’re going to have to figureit out yeah um there is something liberating about that and I think it shows the extent of our reliance yeah ontechnology I think actually getting back into nature is a big positive of nothaving the phone what are your thoughts on this whole attention span thing do you thinkit’s correlation or causation causation yeah although it’s very difficult Ithink I think that’s the issue is is you can’t things will correlate before youcan find the cause well causation is quite hard to map is it because you could sayokay well maybe maybe it’s a food that we eat or something like that like there’s there’s there’s loads and loadsof it’s multifaceted yeah things so actually m is yeah think mapping mappingit to causation and and S thinking whether it’s correlation or causation itis difficult to work out it’s difficult to disentangle yeah or detangle but there definitely is a correlationyeah I I think I think there is now do you think that would be the same case if it was just phones without socialmedia I think social media is the route it’s the root cause of ofmost of most of our problems you know people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates wouldn’t actually allow their kids tohave the phones that they created same with the you know the Tik Tok CE CEOperson the US one well you know is actually based on the psychology ofgambling yeah if you think of the RL scroll as a the spinning fruit machineyeah you don’t know what’s going to come up next oh dopamine dopamin is is so when when you see that little red dotyou get a dopamine H yeah same as same as using a fruit machine or or gamblingyou don’t know what’s going to come up next I mean for me the Red Dot doesn’t give me dop he gives me like a oh godI’ve got to open the app to get rid of this red dot because it irritates me so I mean I’ve switched them off on most of my apps I actually think it might bemore harmful than things like alcohol oh yeah again it’s very diff difficult tostudy it because it’s so proliferous every everywhere and it’s difficult torelate your day-to-day use scientifically to um an app or something like mhm so Ithink I think there’s problems with the scientific method in studying it but anecdotally I can say I feel much betterwhen I’m just completely disconnected and allowed to forget that Instagram or whateverexists I’d rather just it not exist but it but it unfortunately does I listenedto the um book no filter Instagram story of where they started and like how theybecame mhm as big as they are you know I like these books the Netflix one the Nikeone um and I remember getting Instagram couple months after it got released2012 yeah 2012 and it was literally cuz I I did graphic design so all of us inthe design place and the Arts studos were like oh this this really cool photography app that’s come out you knowand everyone jumped on it and um and it was literally to take pictures it wasmade to display your pictures early Instagram and because the quality of thecameras in the old phones back then to 2012 no 2010 sorry would have been whatiPhone 4 maybe um because the quality of the images was so bad that’s why thefilters were put in place it made it look like an old camera whatever else and it covered up thenoise and the grain of those early cameras yeah now look at

VAT and Private Schools

it this clip is taken from an episode all about VAT being introduced at private schools Ian folks my formerEnglish teacher from my days at Forest School click here to watch that one joined us in this episode Mr folks firstquestions whether too many young people are being pushed towards University as some degrees no longer hold the samevalue they once did for many it might make more sense to enter the workforce earlier he also implies that the comfortof a privileged background and private school education May disadvantage students in higher education and laterin life we’ve had some very serious political changes to the way we do things in this country and we are and Ithink it’s a very good thing sending an enormous amount of young people to University yes yes no argument with thatI I would question whether we should be sending all of those young people to University they should continue their education now the reason I mentionedthat is because when I was when I left school at 18 with my a levels went to work in the city very few of my um sixform colleagues went on to University and University was very much um seen as a place where you go to jointhe professions that was the thing you could not take in 1981 when mycolleagues were going off to University you could not take the sort of degrees that you could take now but you had the the the two stream system didn’t you youhad the poly Technics they had poly Technics and also and and to be fair although itit was the early 80s things weren’t great there were jobs available and there were career paths available thatwould allow you to progress and to um have get a formal education you know uma professional education which didn’t to go didn’t need you to go to university and of course everyone went for free noone was piling up debt now the the reason I mentioned that is because I saw some research a few years ago um that II’m struggling here because I’m can’t remember the exact numbers but the bottom line was that they they did astudy of students from State School backgrounds across the country and private school backgrounds across the country they took the same a levels andthey had the same a level grades they followed them through University and it was 100% correlation that the stateschool students outperformed the private school students at that’s interesting well this comes back to what you’resaying about the Prime Minister say it’s all very very well and good to say we’d had these senior members of society thatdid not go to private school but it’s the soft benefits of having a familythat is not struggling financially that is not that is a that can give you that’s it um the space so with the thiswith the university studies because when they got to University the state school students weren’t shocked that they wereasked to get on with it to read to study to work independently unfortunately and this isthis I speak from experience here that the private school system they weren’t cushioned well they’re incrediblycushioned in their day-to-day lives but I meant the state sorry yeah the theprivate school kids are but outside of that the the reality is that how does aprivate school sell itself it says 86.5% a a a level 93% a start a at GC oh 7 ton at gcsc I’m showing my age there I know it’s changed um so what happens isthe tuition in State schools sometimes lacks the breadth that you would expect and because studentsare being funneled and channeled towards those outcomes pass the exam get thebest possible grade that they don’t always develop the broader skills that somebody who is struggling in a a busyschool and then going home and having to share a bedroom with a sibling or two orthree not having a laptop not necessarily having all the other electronic benefits and not having a library of books in the in the house nothaving mom and dad who can pitch in with a bit of homework these students theintelligence levels could be similar but they learn to work and they learn to be more self-reliant and I think thatsometimes the private education system can take away that that understanding that you need to engage educ you cantake a bright child and you can hot housee them to get the grade you want as a school that doesn’t mean you’veeducated speaking of private schools entry into one can be more daunting than it may at

Private School Entry

first seem the children need to work one or two years ahead of their current level they need to write creatively andhold their nerve in an interview as do the parents not to mention the fees and the stress on the parents Anda talks usthrough her and V’s Journey from having no plan to do the 11 plus to receiving offers from all four of their chosenschools and gives advice to any parent thinking of putting their child through the same process speaking king of herwhat was her reaction like when when like when you first came in to see seewhat would happen did she know about the decision was it part her decision as well or and if so what was so all theresults as I said are Journey was a very casual one every time we got the resultsand we told her it was priceless the Joe dropping mommy me I passed it me I thismine I was like yes you passed it came the other email and the other one and the other one and I think back towardsthe end cuz for Me Myself and her dad the we weren’t that stressed butobviously when you’re waiting for an email of results when we already had two out of four I was like she’s got two outof four already like we’ve we’re winning we’ve got like 50% off this so third and fourth were quite casually seen and towe more concentrated on her reaction than the results for the third and fourth cuz um yeah as I said the stressside of even having 50% of her I think it’s impressive forconsistency because I know some very capable kids but to perform acrosslike cuz they they they might take four or five exams to actually get that performance across I mean we werepleasantly shocked it’s not something we had expected yeah so yeah very proud ofher what was her reaction the beginning of the of the process so that was to gono to come in to like come to classes to like and what about when she went to visit schools like before she took thetest she obviously did some visits and things yeah she totally enjoyed coming to the tutionsthat made us waking her up or bringing her in veryeasily and towards visiting the schools or more so the interviews that’ssomething yeah cuz we did interview didn’t yeah so that for a 10-year-old that worried me about Factually like and for a not not very confident 10-year-old that at times Ithink doesn’t necessarily like the sound of her voice cuz she’s very timid Ithought that is something that she may find it hard hence I had thatconversation with you and I saying I think it was you that had 10 questions or something for her for yeah we I didsome interview prep interview prep and I think that helped a lot cuz a lot of her answers when she got back in the carshe’s like Mommy PR had asked me this and the fact that she had gone through with it with you and it came he came upin thing yeah I think that just boosted her voice with the confidence when it came to talking and I think it imlyhelped but yeah that is something I was personally quite scared and her smiley face every time it came back in the carso in terms of preparing for like the lead up to the exam obviously you did the you did theyear five course for the grammar school application and then you did the fourmonth year six course for the Independent Schools so September October November December de the end andthen and then you got your exams and then the exam was in January right so how how did V cope with that last fourmonths like the runup like what were the challenges like was she anxious she stressed and what did you do to sort ofwhat did she do to it was a little bit where she had done her 11 plus in the grammar school one in September yeah shethought everything we prepared it’s done now it’s finished let’s go party andthen he’s like oh hold on you’ve now got this this this this so it was a little bit like oh do I really have to she fedup at the end yeah it got a little bit fed up but then we explained that you have prepped already this is just goingand showing them what you’ve already learned why not just take a few more under your belt while you are preparedfor it so yeah she in the end understood and where we kept regular attendancewith her coming to tution it helped it’s like with with the actually it wasdifferent in the sense um from her 11 plus prep you then had your creativewriting that’s when we came to you quite a bit at Lonand interviews so there was new things to then be learned for those exams as wellit wasn’t just as I sold it to her that you prepped and there you go you all you have to do is go and show them there wasmore to be learned it’s like a it’s it’s a step up even from the wford ex is ityeah then you want to be known all arounded you want to be interviewed yeah and there’s morethere’s more difficult topics there’s different exam formats interviewing the parents interviewing the parents yeah weshould do a parent interview practice Yeah I would I would have signed up for it if that was an offercuz I was like H what they going to ask me yeah as I think it’s a general knowledge for them to know what familythey’re inviting to their schools but yeah as an adult to be told you are going to be interviewed for your child’sschool I was like okay let’s go play that game it’s quite common in in the US system as well like they do like you seewe’re not in the US and it’s not something I’m it’s like nurseries and private nurseries that are reallyElite also I understand where they’re coming from they want to know the whole package the whole family who’s going tothen take part for the next possibly say seven years it’s not just that you can pay the fees it’s more than that too Ithink it’s a lot about their brand it’s like who is who is representing us like do we want them as part of our brand ornot it’s like Yeah The Independent Schools make a big deal about the ethos of the schore and thevalues they’re in the position of yeah picking yeah they can choose that can beone of their filtering processes the good ones yeah the good ones they they have like a very specific value andEthos behind them I think it really it really shows in thestudents how has it been since now that you’ve finished the process you’ve got your results you’ve called everybodyyeah um um how would you okay how would you um give advice what would you say toparents that are like in year five or about to go into you know the year six September course what advice would yougive to them knowing what you know now just the whole journey make it asrelaxing as possible for your whole family for the child for the adults don’t make it a need it’s notthat is in is isn’t that we must have that school don’t it’s just taking awaythe pressure that approach worked really well yeah so even when the results weredue I knew that I roughly knew they due and she was getting a bit uneasy but myself and the husband just make sure wedidn’t talk about it once the exams were done it’s just not something to talk about and when theresults came after that came I mean we had already spoken about if she didn’t get in how would we then break itbut yeah be as casual as possible about the whole thing do you think that approach would work for every everychild or would you say maybe it’s different depending on the child Lear that yeah I’ve learned somefamilies desperately want yeah to get yeah either the child’s friends aregoing or there a lot of expectation around that and that I can imagine wouldwouldn’t be nice coming up to the result days but yeahfor from my experience from prepar preparing to the test day test day isvery important cuz you’ve got your nerves and you don’t want to filter that into your child cuz they are the onethat’s going in there for that three four hours and they pick up on it won’t they yeah that journey in where everyone’s just quiet in thecar yeah try and make it as normal as possible even if you have to Stage ityeah yeah put that music that she likes a little bit louder yeah they just made them feelrelaxed in yeah which is kind of the approach we take with our classes anyway is yeah we want them to be that’s what she liked yeah ultimately like they putchildren put a surprising amount of pressure on themselves and yeah like you said I’ve seen and yeah I think theparent needs to be cognizant of that otherwise it You’ be surprised how muchpressure parents put on their themselves M oh yeah the journey as well that wassomething newly learned for myself but as I said that’s when you reallywanted that pressure from the adult but it does filter through and the children they know they can tell yeah they knowif the parents are bickering or little things and that’s not your normal rude I I remember your dad was it your husbandbeing quite shocked by just the level of questions that I was asking and I was like I can’t even do this I’m I’m a lawyer I know exactly like with thecomprehension and stuff he like I don’t have to cover this in my emails but he said he hands up you’re taking her weknew our strengths he knew that morning yeah before was not histime so he was just like she’s got the pen she got the pencil we got rubber Shar maybe this it’s like don’t needthat it’s fine but from that tone and Body Language it is something where theywould pick up but then he’ll be like you Dro her I’ll sit in the car so you don’t have to worry about parking I’ve always thoughtthe most yeah the most relaxed parent should always take their child in for the exam definitely the case because theother one will project those emotions onto the child andless not you did at that time forany if you remember back at the beginning of this episode Juba mentioned Ai prer and I Revisited this topic in

Can AI Replace Teachers?

our most recent episode as things are moving so quickly in this area a lot has changed since our last podcast onartificial intelligence with Georgia well let’s talk about the human aspect the um AI in theclassroom is at all not the main thing so things likeum personalized reports or adaptive learning platforms um administrative tasks likewe spoke about those are the things it can replace to Aidthe human that’s involved in this process you’ve got obviously the abilitywith AI to process a huge amount of data that a teacher couldn’t possibly processbecause there’s just too much information there’s too much going on and that’s often what teachers are talking about or complaining about sodud is like how can I manage my 30 35 children or whatever in my classbecause I don’t know I I I don’t have the assistance and then you’ve got the possibility ofan AI assistant being able to take in ridiculous amounts of data process thatpass that information to the teacher and then improve learning so it’s not allnecessarily Insidious but no no I know you know it could be but it can be usedthat way yeah you have a strong belief thatwhat’s your belief um we are social creatures we we work off energyeverything is energy like we work off of energy like you can tell if somebody’s upset but they look completely normal you can tell they’renot so I think that that is something that an AI can’treplicate it can probablyeventually kind of imitate it just like you have um I don’t know uhGoogle Gemini Siri or something imitating like thought you know they’re like hm I don’t know that one likethat’s someone’s programmed that in right but you know it’s not real youknow you can you can feel that it’s not real or are you intellectualizing thatbecause I don’t think people know that it’s not real what you mean then PE people areactually quite simple in a sense because they if if something has that behaviorright just imagine like you have one Earth and another Earth this is typical philosophy experiment philosophy mindexperiment so you got one Earth and people don’t have Minds on that Earth but they doeverything um they they basically simulate our Behavior this so there’szombie off with a PR there existing in the world and thenyou’ve got this Earth where you’ve got like thoughts and feelings and experiences mhm yeah now do you think doyou believe that it’s possible to have a zombie Earth yes okay so then what’sgoing to be like how’s it going to be different like the the feelings but does itmatter depends which which Earth you ask you ask the zombie Earth it won’t matterbut they they will say like they can pretend it matters they can pretend they’ve got feelings that requim that requiresthought no not necessarily because if it is if you canjust simulate that if all we are is like well if there’s something extra to theIDE of mind and our qualitative experiences then does it really matterwhat goes on behind it it’s like I can’t tell whether you really feelanything like logically I can’t tell okay I’m just relying on the fact that Ifeel something and I’m responding to the your your behavior in asense yeah and that allows me into of empathy or empathize with your yeah butthat’s again that’s very logical I’m saying that you can pick up on other people’senergies when something is not right in a room you can tell but even withoutpeople’s facial expressions or or like not saying anything you can pick up on bad energy can based on veralcues which can be simulated no I’m I I I’m not talking about non-verbal cuesI’m talking about just okay even if you’re blindfolded and you walk into a room you could pick up there’s something like a bad energy there can you I don’tall right we’ll do that at some point experiment coming soon I I can yeah I pick up on everyone’s energies but Imean we’re very in that regard I don’t I don’t think it is though I think it’s all nonverbal cues I don’t I don’t thinkif you went into a room blindfolded I don’t think you could pick up on the energy in theroom because we haven’t done that we need to do that exp but we’re going to go find a groupof unhappy people yeah put them in a room and then and then and then walk in and then blindfold you and then walk youin and then say if you can tell what s of room is room a room B and Placebo room yeah placeo no one in there oh yeahexactly yeah perfect yeah so I I don’t think you would be able to tell okay Ikind of want to prove that can now when uh data scientists they’rethey’re researching how AI understands stuff all they can say is like it seemslike it it understands because of this and this and this the behavior exhibitsright but we cannot access how the AI feels or if it evenfeels we can’t I don’t think it does no but a simulation of feeling guess we’re going back into but you’re just you’rejust guessing that though like is in potentially it could be the case that with a certain amountof like if you’re able to replicate the new net like um that’ssimilar enough to a human then potentially a Consciousnesscould emerge I don’t think it’s possible because I I think this is the limit ofsilicon some extent but I don’t I couldn’t I couldn’t logically conclude that I wouldn’t know and I never knowlike if I if I had an AI that appeared completely conscious appeared to have moral thought appear to have all of thatappeared to understand what I was saying I wouldn’t know that understood or I wouldn’t know its actual feelingstowards it like it’s a black box we come from Source God SourceUniverse whatever our Consciousness comes from from there what we’re essentially doing is playing God we’recreating these things but that’s your assumption like where where Consciousness comes from like it couldarise from just uh organic connections like it could be be could be EPphenomenal so it just it arises out of just the stuff that we’re made of andthat’s the problem of mind but then we’re all made of the same thing we’re all made of atoms we’re all made of likeStardust whatever so an AI yeah but but you you you think that aConsciousness arises in a stone no but what makes you think thatwhy hasn’t told me I don’t know but getting blood getting blood from a stone is a saying right yeah but you can’ttell but but to what extent could you tell that a stone is conscious versus ahuman like you’re you’re just relying on behavioral cues AR that that is behavior CU yeah but everything has a vibrationStones tables people M everything has a certain frequency yeah but so the stone isconscious could be yeah silicon you know whatever an AI is istherefore from your perspective is is it more conscious than a stone or is it less conscious than astone you get why yeah our final clip is again from the same episode the mainquestion we were looking to answer when recording this episode is whether AI can fully replace teachers yet again prerand I disagree I believe AI will eventually be able to replace everythingPR however believes that the human element can never be fully replaced which of us do you agree with let usknow well we think differently actually don’t we I I think that it will be a alland it can’t replace a human person it can’t even replace the emotions you knowyeah if a kid falls over and is crying the robot’s not going to be like I think it can I I not not in the it needspaternal maternal like it that human element I think it’ll go through stages like these are these arethis is the first wave of AI like think about it that way like so the question is what do you EV eventually do youthink it will fully replace teachers yeah I think it will replace everything like I I don’t think there’s a I thinkwhat will happen as you’ve probably seen with zoom calls and this sort of stuff I think it will attempt to replaceeverything and then everyone’s going to be like this is horrible I want to go back to the office and see see peopleagain people are the are the thing I think if you look at what’s happened with Co and The Zo Zoom calls andeveryone working from home people are desperate to get out again and get back in the office no they’re not like a lotof people want remote jobs they want not fully they want two or three hybrid workthis is the thing it be hybrid yeah I think eventually it will be they H whatpeople want I think they will matter in the long term because the fact is is there’s money in it and I think thoseCor corporate interest will push for it and it will it’ll drive economies of scale in education likenothing else okay so that brings us to the end of season 3 a big thank you to anyone who’s watched or listened to

Outro

these episodes and a big thank you to all the guests too I hope you found some value in these key takeaways and we’ll see you again here next month for the start of season 4 the education Lounge podcast [Music]