Artificial intelligence (AI) has had a significant impact on both education and the world of work, but has not changed the fundamental skills needed to enter the workplace, according to experts.
During an education committee meeting focused on the use of AI and EdTech in education, several people from the field claimed that while AI literacy will be important for young people going forward, the core skills children should be learning to prepare them for their working futures haven’t changed.
Rose Luckin, professor emerita at University College London, claimed the core of education is giving children the soft skills they need for their lives, and ensuring they continue to be “good” at learning – AI hasn’t changed this.
“It’s perfectly clear the nature of work is changing and we have to help young people be prepared for that, but as previously, that’s not just about helping them use the tech,” she said.
“We can’t predict exactly what their jobs will look like, but what we can predict is that they’re going to be really good at learning.”
Oral communication, confidence, resilience, creative thinking, organisation, planning and the ability to work in a team were all offered as examples of the skills employers are looking for in young job seekers, with experts agreeing transferable skills are more important and other technical skills can be taught on the job.
Josh Hillman, director of education at Nuffield Foundation, referred to them as “employability skills” – “transferable skills that are developed partially through the education system but then partially through those skills in work”.
Evolution required
However, employers are increasingly expecting more, and Hillman suggested the education system needs to “evolve to some extent” to combine transferable soft skills with a “foundational knowledge and judgement in AI”.
“[Education] can’t possibly predict what the future needs,” he said.
While core skills are the most important for ensuring young people are employable in the future, more could be done to give people the technology skills they’ll need for work – something that has not just been an issue in the wake of AI.
As Patrick Milnes, head of policy for people and work at the British Chambers of Commerce, explained: “The skills system isn’t aligned with the pace of change that we’re seeing at the moment, so there is an urgent need to develop a serious plan for long-term AI literacy – and not just in education, but in lifelong reform of how people can adapt as the technology changes.”
But on the other side of the coin, Kester Brewin, associate director at the Institute for the Future of Work, argued that “schools are being asked to do so much”.
Schools are currently focused on taking the knowledge of teachers, passing it on to students, and assessing “how much of that transfer has happened” through exams and grades, said Brewin, who stated: “AI and other technologies are fundamentally changing that, so schools have to reimagine what it is they’re for”.
The need for collaboration
Who exactly is responsible for providing people with the digital and technical skills, needed not just for day-to-day life but for work, falls at the centre of an ongoing debate.
Schools exist to educate children, but cannot provide every skill needed for every job, and the curriculum is slow-moving, whereas while firms are responsible for training new and existing employees, they do expect some level of prior knowledge, and what skills are needed by workplaces is often not communicated to education providers.
Milnes said: “Education providers and employers think about skills, not just AI skills but all skills, in quite a different capacity, and that can make joining up the two groups quite difficult in terms of preparing young people for the world of work.
“We’d like to see more engagement with employers around all of this,” he added.
Hillman also said it would be useful for young people to have more guidance surrounding careers so they can be better prepared.
“Young people need to have accurate labour market information about what jobs are changing, what tasks are changing within those jobs; they need to see the emerging areas where those jobs are going to be – do they need to move, do they need to think about recruitment practices?” he said.
Technology has always been a disruptor, but AI is arguably moving faster than the technology reforms that have come before it, and the best ways to be using it are also less understood than with previous innovations, making skills development even harder.
UK government has implemented many schemes and initiatives aiming to increase digital, and especially AI, skills across all levels, including an £11.7m Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund invested in 80 digital skills programmes, and a £200m fund aimed at upskilling businesses and helping them adopt and scale AI, among other things.
But Brewin questioned whether the government fully understands the scale of impact AI will have on both education and work, and said there needs to be a combined “socio-technical” approach to adopting the technology that considers both the capabilities of it and how it can be used, as well as the social implications of doing so.
He expressed concern about the government’s current approach to AI adoption, stating it is heavy on promoting technical capabilities without thinking about the “social dimensions” of doing so, and pointed out that this is especially poignant in schools where AI is being trialled for a number of functions.
“[An] extremely powerful set of technologies could be dropped in [to schools] without really thinking about the social implications on the fundamentally important ecosystem of relationships that is so precious in schools within learning,” said Brewin.
No more junior roles?
Another concern across the tech sector is the possibility that AI will eliminate entry-level jobs as the technology is increasingly implemented to take care of the administrative tasks usually allotted to junior staffers.
Hillman claimed entry-level jobs are “exposed” by rapid AI adoption and the changes that brings, not only because AI can be used to automate entry level tasks, but also because firms are usually unwilling to make hiring decisions when the climate is uncertain which “hits entry-level roles first”, flagging it as an area that needs “attention” from the government.
On the flipside, he claimed: “Graduates probably on average are having more experience of using AI as part of their education, so they are acquiring some of the AI literacy, which means when they’re entering those roles, they are probably better able to immediately apply some of those in the workplace in a sophisticated way.”
This again puts pressure on young people to be learning how to appropriately use AI and apply it to their lives and the workplace without necessarily having been taught how to do so in schools, with Brewin stating: “The basket of skills that young people are being asked to bring to a first job has grown.
“The demand is bigger for them, which puts a huge onus on young people there.”
Parents are even beginning to change the career advice they give their children as a result of AI adoption, and young people believe it will make getting a job more difficult when their time comes, with Will Akrigg, UK government affairs manager at The King’s Trust, claiming AI is “changing the picture” of employment of young people across the UK.
An increasing number of people in the UK are not in education, employment or training (Neet), and while AI is not solely to blame, Akrigg said it’s having a “massive impact on the job market generally”.
Not only are employers expecting more and more skills, but AI is heavily used in the recruitment process, and it’s “disheartening” for young people looking for jobs.
The divide
Another disheartening concern for young people in the wake of AI is its potential to widen the diversity gap in the tech sector. Where it is already more difficult for young people from lower-income backgrounds to enter a tech role, AI could serve to make it even harder.
Hillman said: “We’re probably overestimating the changes that are happening in the short term and are underestimating the long-term change, but the direction of travel is quite clear – AI is changing work across a wide swathe of occupations and sectors unevenly.
“[AI is] definitely narrowing the number of opportunities for those young people, and it’s also changing the nature of those jobs, but I think it’s particularly going to be challenging for those young people who have lower-level qualifications, or struggled to get work experience and work readiness through their pathways.”
Access to digital across the UK is already uneven, both as a result of different socio-economic circumstances, disability and geographic discrepancies, and while AI has the potential to help this, it also has the potential to exacerbate it if implemented incorrectly.
As pointed out by Milnes: “If you can’t even get reliable internet, you’re obviously not going to be able to use AI in the same transformative manner.”
The UK government has been working to use AI to develop free-to-use tutoring tools in schools across the UK with the view of making educational resources more easily accessible to students regardless of their socio-economic background, helping to level the playing field for those who, in many cases, do not have access to technology at home or are unable to afford private tutoring.
But there is no “quick fix”, warned Neil Selwyn, professor at Monash University. “I’m worried there is a tendency to see AI as a quick fix for students who are struggling in school,” he said.
“There’s no quick fix for learners who are from social deprived multiply disadvantaged backgrounds; I think we do need to invest in people and resources and time,” said Selwyn. “Tech can be part of that in the background, but I don’t think technology is ever going to be the solution to any kind of social disadvantage issue.”
It’s clear that AI is changing work, education and mindsets, but only careful consideration will ensure young people will have equal access to the careers they want.
As Luckin surmised: “Most of my time as an academic I believed AI would be a great tool for breaking down barriers, for greater inclusion, and it’s not rolling out that way at the moment, and we really need to be careful about that.”
