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Thursday October 24th, 2024
Welcome to your October issue. In this edition, we’re looking at AI in education, the impact of social media, and the importance of work experience.
As we wind down into the half-term break, families of students revising for mock exams next term might feel anything but relaxed. We hope this month’s read will give you a few useful pointers to alleviate exam-related worries. For example, if something feels hard or ‘effortful’ – educational psychologists insist that’s a good thing. Researchers suggest using your mobile phone ‘wisely’ could actually boost your mood and productivity. And having first-hand experience and insights into the sort of career you might like to pursue can relieve anxiety, boost motivation and improve academic performance across the board, according to the OECD.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) works to establish evidence-based international standards and build better policies for better lives. Its recent focus on teenage career uncertainty found that two in every five 15-year-olds have no clear career plans. In our fast-paced modern world, where people can and do successfully pursue multiple careers and change career trajectory, this might not seem problematic or unusual. But the OECD found that career uncertainty is a big contributor to teenage anxiety and can have a detrimental effect on how well teens engage with their learning. Furthermore, it found that students with clearer career goals were more likely to secure higher-paying jobs and achieve job satisfaction in adulthood.
We partner with organisations offering immersive career experiences designed to give students the clarity and confidence they need to succeed, both in their education and in a crowded job market.
Real-world experience in over 15 sectors gives students insights into potential career paths, helping them make informed decisions about their future. Alongside professional mentoring, the real-life experiences offered build problem-solving, teamwork, and leadership skills – highly valued by universities and employers alike.
As well as offering immersive work experience opportunities for younger teens, one of our partners has just launched a new, two-week immersive work experience programme for older students, taking place in London next summer. From 18th to 29th August 2025, students aged 19 to 24 can gain valuable experience in two competitive and popular career paths: entrepreneurship and investment banking. Based at the UCL campus in London, the programme features full-day immersive activities and career simulations, led by accomplished industry experts. Delegates also benefit from visits to professional venues, opportunities for private networking with industry leaders and career coaching to develop critical skills, including interview practice, application guidance, and assessment centre preparation, plus an industry reference letter to give students a competitive edge in the job market.
Please do get in touch if you’d like to find out more about these exciting opportunities.
This segment is dedicated to the idea that applying yourself to a task, especially if you find it challenging, can have far-reaching benefits. So, if you engage in that work experience, knuckle down to that essay, or persist with your revision plans, maybe you’ll see progress in more places than you expect…
The ‘law of least effort’ posited that, since we evolved from hunter-gatherers whose access to food was variable to say the least, we are hardwired to minimise effort, or, at the very least, not to waste it. But this premise hasn’t held entirely true: we seem to value effort, often attributing greater value to something because it was effortful, either for us or for someone else, say psychologists. For example, if we know or sense a piece of art or literature took longer or was more difficult to produce than another, we will often value it more highly or think it is ‘better’ than its less effortfully conceived counterpart. Psychologists at the university of Toronto explored this idea earlier this year, when they asked undergraduate students to produce opinion-based essays. One cohort had to write their own essay; another could use AI assistance to complete it. Those who wrote their own essays valued them at least as highly as the cohort producing AI-generated essays, although these were objectively rated ‘better’. As above, when our brains perceive something to have involved more effort, they believe it to be superior to something else that took less effort.
How much effort we put into something, or, expressed in a different way – how difficult we find something – can be harnessed to great effect in education. An often-repeated experiment sees students given a text to read. One group reads it only once, then is tested. Another group gets to read it twice before the test. Straight after the experiment, the group who read it twice perform better, unsurprisingly you might say. But… one week later, the group who read it only once now out-perform the others when the test is repeated. Cognitive psychologists say the reversal comes from the effort taken to retrieve the information. It’s harder for the group that read the text once to recall the information, and this produces what they dub ‘desirable difficulties’. The effort involved improves the outcome.
Educational psychologists say that by praising effort over outcome or performance, we can foster ‘learned industriousness’. And researchers in this field agree that increasing our ‘effort threshold’ in one area can help us feel comfortable about trying harder in other areas too. So, could being prepared to push yourself on the rugby pitch or swimming pool make it easier to exert your mind in a revision or learning scenario? It’s certainly a strong argument in favour of taking regular revision breaks to exercise, practise music, do some crafting, solve a problem or even play computer games (scientists applied the theory successfully to gaming scenarios too!)
Downtime during revision is important as well, but is a blanket ban on smartphones and social media while you’re revising necessary or even beneficial?
Although more young people than ever before have their own mobile phones, Generation Alpha children (a.k.a. Gen A – born between 2010 and 2024) seem to be increasingly savvy about the dangers of social media and the risk of phone addiction. In a survey conducted by the Beano, Gen A children were found to have an impressive awareness of the practical benefits of specific brands, including social media platforms, but (crucially) could also see how brands sought to impact them emotionally. In Beano Brain’s recent survey of the ‘100 coolest brands’, social media sites had slipped down the rankings – with the exception of YouTube, which bagged the top spot. This, argues Beano Brain’s director of strategy, suggests Gen As consider YouTube to be a ‘safe’ place with multiple practical benefits, while they’re becoming increasingly aware of the way some social media sites seek to manipulate them. Some are savvy enough to turn this perceived manipulation on its head, installing apps that incentivise self-discipline; for example, rewarding them for not checking social media while they’re revising.
The relationship between social media, mobile phone use, and emotional wellbeing is well documented, but inconclusive. The results of a recent study, published in New Scientist, suggest that limiting your social media use won’t necessarily improve your sense of wellbeing. In that study, people who went from using social media for at least two hours a day to just 30 minutes a day reported no improvement to their sleep or emotional wellbeing. In fact, in a separate study of teens in the US, New Scientist reported that smartphone use (though not necessarily on social media sites) improved their mood. The researchers were at pains to point out that “phones are neither good nor bad”. Used well and wisely, they’re powerful tools that can offer meaningful insights, connections and solutions.
But in an increasingly digital world, it’s not just phones or social media sites that divide opinion amongst parents and educators – it’s the proliferation of AI. This month marks a year since independent body, ‘AI in Education’, launched its website, offering advice and guidance alongside real-life case studies to help schools navigate this fast-developing subject. The coalition includes AI specialists from Google, the University of Cambridge and the Alan Turing Institute; leading scientists like Lord Rees, the current astronomer royal; headteachers from state and private schools; and the heads of UK exam boards. Co-launched by the head of Epsom College, Sir Anthony Seldon, and Alex Russell, chief executive of multi-academy Bourne Education Trust, it’s designed to “provide the real-time advice that schools need”, says Seldon.
Five groups focus on different aspects of AI: an advisory panel, led by pioneers from universities and tech companies, scrutinises and recommends new products and pathways for the expert panels to test and evaluate. There is also an examiners’ panel, a political advisers’ panel, a student panel and a strategy panel, comprising leaders from the state and independent sectors. A practitioners’ committee, chaired by Epsom College’s head of digital education, Richard Alton, shares best practice and develops education programmes harnessing the positive power of AI.
Combining the expertise and insights of these specialists helps schools take advantage of the benefits that AI brings, while avoiding the potential pitfalls. An example of the former might be reducing teachers’ marking workload; among the latter is the much-publicised risk of pupils cheating in assignments and assessments. But don’t forget how the students who didn’t use AI in the essay-writing experiment felt about their efforts, and how those efforts can contribute to their performance in the longer term.
If you have any questions or concerns about any topic covered here, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Until next time…
“ Regency Education helped all three of our boys get into a wonderful school where they now thrive. ”
“ REGENCY EDUCATION WAS ABLE TO HELP US WITH EVERY STEP OF THE SCHOOL APPLICATION PROCESS ENSURING THE EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS OF OUR CHILDREN. AN INVALUABLE SERVICE. ”
“ REGENCY EDUCATION WAS ABLE TO HELP US WITH EVERY STEP OF THE APPLICATION PROCESS ENSURING THE EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS OF OUR CHILDREN - AN INVALUABLE SERVICE. ”
