I want to talk about something that's been bothering me for a while.

Every week I teach 52 young people, aged 11 to 17. Some in school classrooms, some in small groups, some one to one. That's around 16 hours of live teaching a week. And over the last couple of years I've watched something change in them.

![01-students-every-week](/api/storage/objects/uploads/6c482be0-7691-41b9-9825-cfd0d778bd9f)


They struggle to focus for more than a few minutes. When something gets hard, they reach for the phone. And now the phone has AI on it, which means the answer is always four seconds away.

So the homework gets done. The essay gets written. The parent sees it finished and relaxes. But when I sit with that child and ask them to explain it without looking anything up, there's often nothing there.

This isn't just a feeling I have. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania gave secondary school students free access to ChatGPT to practise maths. Their practice scores shot up. Then the AI was taken away for the exam, and those students scored 17% worse than students who never had it. The AI hadn't helped them learn. It had done the learning for them.

That's what worries me. Our kids are getting very good at producing answers and very bad at thinking.

And honestly, I don't blame them. They're growing up surrounded by apps that some of the smartest people in the world designed to keep them scrolling and save them effort. Put any of us in their shoes and we'd probably be the same.

But that's exactly why we can't leave them to figure it out alone.

I don't think anyone else is going to fix this for us. Not the schools on their own, not the government, and definitely not the tech companies, because a distracted kid is good for their numbers. It's down to us. Parents, teachers, uncles and aunties, the masjid, anyone a child looks up to.

That's why I started Excelia.

We teach coding, computing and AI to 11 to 18 year olds. But the subject is only part of it. What I really care about is teaching them how to learn again.

Here's what that looks like in practice.

Every session opens with students pulling what they learned last time out of their own heads, with no notes. Most of a session is the student's own thinking, not me talking at them.

A fact doesn't count as learned because a student saw it once and nodded. It counts when they've recalled it correctly from memory three times, on three different days. We track around 1,400 key exam facts across seven GCSE, IGCSE and KS3 courses this way, so nothing slips through.

Every single piece of homework starts closed-book. Phone down, notes away, your own brain first. Only after that can AI come in.

And that same University of Pennsylvania study had a second group. Their AI was set up to give hints, not answers. Those students didn't suffer at all. So the problem isn't AI. It's AI that does the thinking for the child. That's the line we hold at Excelia. Our students learn to build with AI and question it, and they learn when to put it down.

We also keep parents properly in the loop. That matters more than people think. A study of 16,000 pupils found that regular, specific updates to parents gave children around a month's extra progress in maths. Not "your child is doing great", but what was covered, what stuck and what needs work.

And when it clicks, you can see it. The whole world runs on patterns, and when a young person finally sees the pattern in something, it shows on their face. That moment changes how they feel about learning. It's the reason I do this.

So here's what I'd ask of you.

![Sextant](/etchings/sextant.webp)

If you're a parent, try this tonight. Ask your child to explain their homework to you, phone face down on the table. If they can't, the learning hasn't happened yet, and that's worth a conversation.

If you're a teacher, you already know a finished piece of work doesn't prove much anymore. Ask them to recall it, out loud, on their own.

If you run a community group, a class, or a youthy programme, please talk about this. Our children are entrusted to us. We're going to be asked about how we looked after them, and that includes their minds.

And if this resonates at all, send it to one parent you think needs to read it.

I'm putting this in writing so you can hold me to it. Excelia will never be a place that keeps kids looking busy without actually making them better. If it ever drifts that way, call me out.

The AI age is here whether we're ready or not. I'd rather our kids come out of it sharp, confident and in control.

If you feel the same, come and stand with me.