The world our pupils will enter has moved on and schools everywhere are working out what that means. This article looks at the pressures reshaping education, what the government is asking schools to do about it, and how Haberdashers’ schools are responding.
THE EMPLOYMENT SHIFT
“There’s a huge disconnect between what students think is good and what we think is good.”
James Darley advises some of the country’s largest graduate employers. He gave Heads and CEOs an important message at a recent Working Together event. Every year he sits across the table from candidates who have done everything right – good university, good degree, good grades -and finds them unable to answer the question that actually matters. “Even if your answer is really interesting,” he said, “unless you show me that you’ve taken personal responsibility, met the needs of the team, delegated, driven, encouraged – you don’t get the job.”
The proportion of graduates receiving a First or 2:1 has risen from 56 to 79 % since 2011. But graduate vacancies fell by 14.6 % in 2026, the steepest single-year drop since the financial crisis. We have one million young people not in education, employment or training (NEET). So what is the answer? The World Economic Forum identifies the skills employers will need through 2030 as analytical thinking, resilience, creative thinking and self-awareness – none of which are reliably assessed by the qualifications that currently define school success.
A harder financial and political context
All schools are contending with costs that have risen faster than income- teacher pay increases, NI contributions rises, the maintenance burden of ageing school estates, SEND requirements & etc.
Government policy is a factor. For independent schools, VAT and the loss of business rate relief have increased costs and narrowed the addressable market. Fee inflation is reaching its ceiling. For state schools, real-term reductions in per-pupil funding mean these pressures must be absorbed without a mechanism to pass them on. The DfE’s new enrichment framework sets benchmarks for structured provision beyond the timetable, against which Ofsted will assess personal development from September. The Curriculum Review recommends scrapping the EBacc, cutting GCSE exam time by 10 % and creating a new Level 3 pathway. There is much to do and limited resource with which to do it.
What technology could change – and what it might not
Will AI resolve some of this pressure? Perhaps. A randomised trial at Harvard found that a purpose-built AI tutor produced twice the learning outcomes of the best human teacher in the same subject, in less time and with higher student satisfaction. An adaptive AI tool could support pupils whose need for differentiation tests the system because their needs are too specific, their pace too different, or the gaps in their knowledge too varied. The government has committed to deploying AI tutors to 450,000 children on free school meals. Some of the large commercial education groups (Alpha, Inspired) are already opening new schools built around a strong AI input.
But this is still an unproven vision. The COVID experience is a lesson: moving learning online at scale worked for engaged, higher-attaining pupils and damaged the most vulnerable. AI need not repeat that pattern, if equity is treated as a design principle from the outset. But our pupils are sitting qualifications whose results still determine life chances. Schools cannot treat current cohorts as a pilot. The challenge is to develop a considered position on which aspects of AI are appropriate for which purposes, with which safeguards and evidence of impact, before the market makes those choices.
What our schools are doing
Haberdashers’ Advantage programmes have been building the kind of structured, skills-focused development that both the enrichment framework and the graduate market are now demanding. At Elstree, the Habits programme aims to embed the development of character and transferable skills across the school’s culture. At Monmouth, the Futures Backpack gives pupils a framework for tracking and articulating their own development over time. Habs Aspire, the Company’s mentoring programme connecting pupils with professional mentors, adds a further dimension: direct contact with people navigating the careers and industries that pupils are heading toward.
Some interesting work is in progress on exploring the potential of AI at our schools. There is some exciting experimental work (some of it pupil led) going on in Elstree’s Innovation centre. The approach at HATS is to ensure that use of AI is grounded in the principle that AI should amplify not replace human expertise.
We are preparing young people to thrive in a world where AI is used as part of everyday life, while exploring how it can support more inclusive and adaptive learning, help teachers provide more timely and meaningful feedback, and strengthen the insights that inform decision-making across our schools.
Gemma Lavin Senior Director Strategy and Innovation Haberdashers Academies Trust South
The questions we have not yet answered
The Haberdashers’ schools that will serve our pupils best in ten years will probably not look exactly like the ones we run today. Working out what they should look like, without disrupting what is already working, is perhaps the most important question the family of schools faces today. The Company has been supporting schools for over 300 years – what will the next phase bring?
Arabella Gonzalez
Director for Schools and Estates
