AI is the straw that broke conventional schooling’s back

Why Montessori’s pathway to eighteen matters more than ever.

The exam focused school system prevalent today has been in steady decline for decades. Over my thirty years in education, I have watched schools question their approaches as the world around them changed. I remember those conversations when the internet began entering our lives in the 1990s. Then smartphones put that world into our pockets in the early 2000s, but the same old exam-based systems continued.

Now we have AI and it’s here to stay, I believe this is the straw that has finally broken conventional education’s back. We can no longer keep preparing children for a world that is changing so much around us and assume that a good set of examination results will be enough.

However much conventional schools talk about creativity, collaboration and independent thought, examinations are still the journey for them. A sixteen-year-old taking ten GCSEs might sit twenty-five papers. They go through preparation, mocks, revision and the final exam period and so during years 10 and 11, roughly six months’ worth of time can be spent just focusing on exams.

Montessori saw early adolescence as a rebirth. She saw it as a time to discover who you are, where you belong and what you can contribute. That is exactly the time when conventional schooling begins to narrow its focus towards examinations. Conventional schools feel like a machine designed to produce a product whereas Montessori’s starting point is the development of the child. She recognised that education needed to follow the developmental and relational aspects of human growth. The child’s development should guide the school’s work.

As she wrote:

“Our teaching must only answer the needs of the child, never dictate them.”

A. S. Neill a contemporary of Montessori and the founder of Summerhill school, wrote a similar idea when describing Summerhill:

“We had one main idea. To make the school fit the child, not of making the child fit the school.”

These ideas have stayed with me through my own journey in education. They ask a great deal of us as educators. We have to observe, listen, understand and respond to the children. We have to know the children in front of us and be prepared to question our own assumptions.

At the Maria Montessori Institute, London, we work from that understanding of human development. Montessori’s observations which were made more than a hundred years ago and now supported by modern neuroscience, continue to show us a way of thinking about children. There is an emphasis on their human development, their learning and their relationships. Montessori gave us a starting point for responding to the rapid and overwhelming changes happening in the world right now.

Many people do not realise that Montessori’s educational vision went from birth through to eighteen and beyond. She described the years from twelve to eighteen as the third plane of development. It’s a period when adolescents are thinking about their own possibilities and purpose and how they connect with the world. Her thinking offers a pathway through the years when young people are asking who they are, where they belong and what they might contribute.

This is the pathway we offer The Marina Montessori Institute. Our adolescent programme has human potential and development at its centre and extending that journey through to eighteen is central for us. We want families considering their children’s futures to see what a Montessori education can offer during these important years.

These years of adolescence combine academic study with practical work, enterprise and a connection with the world around them, as well as the freedom and responsibility they have within their community. Young people develop their interests through partnerships, work experience and the multitude of opportunities that London offers. Our adolescents discover that their knowledge has a use, their contribution matters and they can make things happen. We have a framework that helps young people grow towards adult life, with increasing independence and a stronger understanding of themselves and others. Traditional exams, such as A levels can have a place in their experience when the adolescent sees this as a way to get where they want to go or to pursue a field of study they are passionate about.

AI has become a leveller, challenging the hierarchies of conventional schooling by making knowledge and capabilities more widely accessible. When it can produce an answer, a piece of writing or a plan in seconds, what matters increasingly is knowing what to ask, judging what comes back and deciding how to use it responsibly.

No one can claim to know where all this change will take us. My thirty years in education have certainly not given me the ability to predict the future. But I have strengthened my belief that a personal journey of discovery, grounded in freedom, responsibility, human development and relationships, gives young people a vital foundation for them to meet the challenges ahead.

For some students, university will be the right next step. Others will find their direction through specialist study, vocational education, enterprise or work. At MMI, we open doors to the world and help young people understand where those doors might lead. A clear 12- 18 pathway means families can look ahead and understand how their child’s education could grow with them.

I believe the old exam-driven, hierarchical model of conventional schooling has reached the end of its usefulness. Its structures remain, but the world it was designed to serve has changed dramatically. AI has made that impossible to ignore.

The good news is that Montessori offers a pathway forward, extending through childhood and adolescence to eighteen. We open doors and possibilities, each one with endless opportunities.