Education | Schools | Culture

When the subject is highly controversial, one cannot hope to tell the truth [but] one can give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Virginia Wolf

2026

Kids and AI: Generative AI without Degenerative Learning (3 of 3)

This is the third of three posts. The first looked at when children should start using AI, and the second at integrity and detection. This [...]

2026

Kids and AI: Knowing the Child beats Detecting the AI (2 of 3)

This is the second of three posts. The first set out what the research says and where we’ve landed on when students use AI; this [...]

2026

Kids and AI: When should they start? Where we’ve landed, and why (1 of 3)

This is the first of three posts, and it sets out what the research says and where we’ve landed on when students use AI. The [...]

2026

Motivating Real Understanding in an AI Age

[This is more or less what I said at the ToddleAI Schools Showcase on 12 September, lightly tidied. It’s more a talk than a post, [...]

2026

If it’s not illegal, immoral, or anti-social…

It’s still the early weeks of the year and the new students are finding their feet and making new connections. So it’s understandable that we [...]

2026

Choosing Well and Losing Anyway: Loss Without Regret.

I was recently speaking with a student – call him Gill – choosing subjects for his IB Diploma. Most of it was easy, but the [...]

2026

Angels, Apes and Itchy Shirts

We have some thousand new students this year – and they have been finding their feet. I’ve been watching them, from kindergarten to high school [...]

2026

People and Institutions: What Individuals Can’t Do (Part 2 of 2)

Last time I said the world’s progress comes down to individuals. That’s true, but it’s nott the whole truth; here’s the other half. For as [...]

2026

People and Institutions: The Things That Didn’t Happen (1 of 2)

Institutions have their own lives, beyond any individual. The start-of-year institution machinery (timetables, buses, logins, uniforms and so on) has been a necessary focus for [...]

2026

Hopes and Fears at the Start of the School Year

The start of the school year brings several thousand children back onto our Campuses over an exciting few days, with many hundreds of them arriving [...]

2026

What Matters

A student on his gap year visited me yesterday; having spent 3 months teaching, he described his ‘new-found respect for teachers’ to me. As you [...]

2026

Misreading cultures we think we understand.

It’s hard not to be aware of cultural differences, and most of us deal with these with students, colleagues and friends on a daily basis. [...]

NEW BOOK · MARCH 2027

Connection

A Year of Great Conversations with Your Teen

By Nicholas Alchin

A practical guide to helping parents build meaningful conversations and stronger connections with their pre-teens and teenagers.

Pre-order your copy →