Everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere

In December 2025, I had a conversation with SHINE’s CEO that ended up redefining the way I understand education. As I rubbed my eyes open and logged into my computer at five in the morning, I didn’t know I was gearing up for a long journey of adjusting to British Standard Time. Having researched education for much of my undergraduate career, I was eager to learn more about student experiences in disadvantaged communities from a charity working close to the ground. What I thought would be a standard meeting to discuss how our mutual interest might translate into a meaningful summer project, quickly proved to be founded on something greater: curiosity. 

We delved into how socioeconomic inequality shapes education, attainment and the experience of learning for children in the North of England, and about how quickly new technologies are changing that experience – for better and for worse. Neither of us had a settled view on how artificial intelligence (AI) might affect students who have comparatively little resources. I was struck by one unique feature of SHINE’s work as a charity: its focus on innovation. Our curiosities around education and technology were disappointed by the fact that most discourse around AI occurs in well-resourced, higher education settings. With SHINE having invested more than £40 million in educational innovation, much of it in early-stage ideas from teachers trying to change outcomes for children in their own communities, it is a regional leader thinking hard about EdTech and AI – and like most of us, plagued by questions about how to best harness it going forward. To address this gap we developed a project that brought me away from my desk, out from behind my laptop and into communities in the North East of England to find out what people think.

Trading assumptions for opinions

I spent the past two months immersed in local schools and multi-academy trusts, speaking with school leadership, teachers, pastoral staff and children aged 6-16. Through these school visits and countless conversations, it became clear that these children are far more digitally literate and technologically savvy than we assumed. The majority have personal devices, bypass social media age restrictions and have already experimented with AI tools – often as part of forward-thinking school assignments. As a result, most are aware of both the risks and benefits of these technologies, with an understanding of how AI can complement their creativity and learning rather than undermine it, when used thoughtfully. Every group identified that AI tools are often wrong, their responses must be checked by humans and that their help is distinct from the benefits of a teacher’s help. Most pointed out that “if you use it all the time, you won’t learn much”. 

This pushed me to sit back and think: what can we really learn from these kids? How can I make the most of this rare opportunity – access to educators and bright, resilient young people – to inform a better way forward for managing these tools in classrooms across the region? How can I use this chance to understand the landscape here more deeply, by asking more meaningful, challenging and insightful questions? That curiosity grew into a commitment to discovering how we can pave a better way forward for students here. My time in the region taught me to trade my assumptions for their opinions. I came in looking for evidence of a digital divide, but I’ve left wondering if the real gap isn’t in what these kids know, but in whether those with authority and resources bother to ask them. What I found were rooms full of kids who are already ahead of the conversation, and a reminder that the best thing I could do is listen.

Exposure as a vehicle for progress

A sentiment that came up repeatedly was the limited exposure some of their students have to the world just beyond them – something that several teachers told me can make it harder for children to imagine what might be possible for them. Thanks to support from the Laidlaw Foundation, I have had the opportunity to travel quite a bit – to the Laidlaw Scholars Conference to present my research last year, now to England to carry out this project, meeting and learning from countless people around the world along the way. These experiences have helped me understand more about the world and my place in it. However, a number of conversations also helped me understand how histories of deprivation and limited opportunity can shape communities over generations. Several people I spoke to described families who had lived in the same neighbourhoods for generations, with some children having had little opportunity to travel beyond their immediate area. This raised new questions for my work around ed-tech and their use of other digital technologies – while social media can grow awareness and exposure, it can also reinforce the assumptions they already have about the world around them by building echo chambers, highlighted by several instances of misinformation being spread.

Closely tied to exposure is our belief in the value of education. If children do not have strong role models, or have never seen education create new opportunities for people from backgrounds like their own, those positive outcomes may not feel within reach. Several teachers I spoke to also raised concerns about resilience, describing children who can  find it difficult to pick themselves up after a mistake and try again – something they linked to factors including self-esteem and, in some cases, exposure to screens. These challenges are not unique to  communities facing deprivation, but teachers suggested they can be compounded by the wider circumstances in which some children are growing up. Social media, scrolling and instant access to information online affects children everywhere. I was left wondering whether the ability to scroll past anything challenging or uninteresting in an instant, means that the muscle for pushing through hard things never really gets built.

Schools across the Tees Valley Education Trust, Endeavour Academies Trust and others across the region have proactively tried to counter this lack of exposure. SHINE supports the place-based work of many of these communities, including schools that bring in representatives from local organisations, take students to local ports and companies to expose them to new industries, and conduct field trips to museums, skating rinks and other cities to grow their holistic experience. I believe this is one of the most important and transformative parts of the work that education funders and innovators can support. For kids to grow up believing in the value of education and seeing themselves in the future of their environment, they need to feel they belong there. Efforts to broaden students’ horizons are, in large part, about showing them why it’s worth persevering. 

More than the sum of our skills

In my first week I attended the annual SHINE Network & Learn event for SHINE teachers. Here, I heard keynote speaker Louise Quinn say something that became the discipline of the whole project: “Everything works somewhere, and nothing works everywhere”. Spoken with reference to designing education interventions, this is a lesson in humility and perseverance, acknowledging that any programme can work very well for children under specifically suited conditions, but fail entirely under different ones. It is a useful thing to remember in cases where AI is sold as a universal solution for everyone.

From the perspective of educators serving deprived communities – often with varying learning abilities and few resources to support them – the sentiment around artificial intelligence is one of hope and possibility. AI tools seem to offer unprecedented potential for coming up with creative solutions tailored to students’ needs. However, the same tools that are affecting how teachers do their jobs will shape the careers their students are preparing for, and schools are left asking what they can do to prepare them for these changes. 

If a machine can replace or augment so much of what we can do, then being human must amount to more than the sum of our skills. There must be some fundamental quality about us worth honing and appreciating. Extending this logic to education, there is something about the process of learning that is deeply human and meaningful in its own right, even in an age of instant answers. If we are able to identify and enhance that quality, could we design a more responsive education system? Artificial Intelligence, ironically, gives us reasons to think harder about what it means to be human – and how we might amplify that spark for those who need the most support to reconnect with their education. 

Access to knowledge is not the central problem. For years, anyone with an internet connection has been able to search for almost anything, learn a language for free through YouTube or study the finer points of advanced mathematics independently. Yet most of us do not, because access alone does not create motivation. What moves us to learn is often bound up with how we see education and, crucially, how we see the people delivering it. We begin to care about achievement not only for ourselves, but also for the person who knows us, encourages us and shares in our progress. For some children, this comes primarily from home; for others, school is where they need this most. AI can be a powerful lever for education, but it can never replace the relational connections on which all learning depends.