As a parent, I need to speak plainly. I’m not writing this to scare you but to wake you up. What I’m about to say keeps me up at night. Not just as a concerned dad but as someone who sees the world of tomorrow forming faster than our school systems can even begin to comprehend.

The truth is this, our schools are failing to prepare our children for the future they are going to inherit. Not out of malice or neglect but out of sheer inability to keep up. The curriculum that shapes our children's minds is stuck in the past, while the future is sprinting ahead with artificial intelligence leading the charge.

And the more I research, the more involved I become, the more terrified I feel, not just for my kids but for all of ours.

Look at what’s happening globally. AI is now a daily part of nearly every major industry. From finance and healthcare to marketing, law, manufacturing, and agriculture, artificial intelligence is becoming the co-pilot to every worker’s job.

Yet here in the UK, my children and yours are being taught as though it’s still 1995.

They’re memorising facts they could Google in seconds, writing essays by hand, and learning skills that won’t equip them for a future where prompting an AI, collaborating with it, verifying its results, and understanding its biases will be fundamental to survival in the job market. Don’t get me wrong, the fundamentals of education remain critical to their development but the skills required for tomorrow are AI related.

Let this sink in for a moment.

On the 1st of September 2025, just ten days ago China made AI education mandatory in every school across the country. From the age of six, every child is now required to receive formal AI instruction, at least eight hours per school year, with many regions already delivering more.

That means that as of today, millions of children in China have already begun learning how artificial intelligence works how to train it, how to use it, how to understand it, and how to innovate with it.

While we’re still debating whether to allow ChatGPT in classrooms, while our schools are holding onto outdated curricula, China is shaping an entire generation of AI natives.

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Estonia introduced coding into its national curriculum in 2012.
South Korea is investing billions in AI and digital learning infrastructure.
In the United States, wealthier school districts are already deploying AI training and tools at scale.
Private and independent institutions around the world are racing ahead with AI education.

The UK schools are lagging behind. Our children are being left behind. And if we don’t act fast, the gap will become impossible to close.

We’re not talking about a fad. This isn’t just about techy kids building robots or games. This is the new foundational skill. Just as literacy and numeracy shaped the Industrial Age, AI fluency will define the Information Age and beyond.

MIT’s Cynthia Breazeal has shown that children who understand AI by age twelve develop superior creativity, resilience, and computational thinking. Stanford’s AI4K12 programme proves that even primary school children can grasp core AI concepts when taught the right way.

Yuval Noah Harari, in his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, puts it bluntly: the greatest challenge facing today’s children isn’t what to learn, but how to keep learning in a world where AI renders old knowledge obsolete at lightning speed.

Imagine your child entering the workforce ten years from now. They’re bright, talented, and full of potential. But the job market has changed. AI is no longer optional. It’s expected. The role requires them to generate AI-assisted insights, build data-driven models, or solve problems collaboratively with machines.

But they were never taught how to do any of it. They’ve never learned to prompt an AI, never questioned an output, never worked with the tools everyone else takes for granted. They’re behind before they’ve even started.

This isn’t science fiction. It’s already happening. The children of today are stepping into an economy tomorrow where 97 million AI-related jobs will be created by 2025, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. The highest paying, most secure roles will go to those who are AI fluent. The rest will scramble to catch up.

I have seen what happens when parents stop waiting for the system to catch up.

A friend of mine began teaching her daughter the basics of machine learning during the 2020 lockdown. They used free online tools and simple programming environments. By thirteen, her daughter had created a working AI app that helps dyslexic students with reading.

She didn’t wait for the school to include AI in the curriculum. She didn’t wait for government policy to change. She took initiative, and it changed her daughter’s life.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, I understand. This is new territory for most of us. But you don’t have to be a software engineer or an AI researcher to help your child get started. What you do need is the willingness to act and a trusted guide to show you the way.

That’s why I want to introduce you to something special.

SparkAI Academy is a new initiative being built right here in the UK. It’s designed specifically for parents who want to take action today, not next year, not when it’s too late.

SparkAI isn’t another online course or a generic coding camp. It is being built to become a comprehensive, age-appropriate, and purpose-driven platform to introduce children to the fundamentals of AI in a way they can understand, enjoy, and grow with.

It will focus on:

SparkAI Academy is not finished yet, but the foundation is being laid and the vision is clear. It is about more than education. It is about creating opportunity. It is about making sure that children across the UK, and eventually across the world, aren’t left behind.

You wouldn’t ignore it if your child were falling behind in reading. You wouldn’t delay if they were struggling with maths. So why wait when it comes to AI?

This isn’t about more screen time. It’s about meaningful exposure to the very systems and tools that will shape your child’s adulthood. This isn’t about turning your child into a tech genius. It’s about making sure they aren’t locked out of the world that’s being built around them.

The children of China, Estonia, Korea, and the US are already learning these skills. Ten days ago, millions of Chinese school children began their journey with AI. If we keep waiting, our children will fall further and further behind.

SparkAI Academy is not just a vision. It’s a movement. And right now, you have the opportunity to be part of it from the very beginning.

Subscribe to the SparkAI Academy newsletter to stay informed, get early access to resources, receive expert guidance, and learn how to prepare your child — even before the full programme launches.

By subscribing, you’ll:

You don’t need to know everything about AI. You just need to care enough to act.

It’s no longer a question of whether AI will shape your child’s future. It already is. The only question is whether your child will be prepared to shape it too.

The world is changing. SparkAI Academy is being built to help children rise to that challenge.

Subscribe now to begin your journey with us. Give your child the tools they’ll need to thrive. Because the greatest risk is doing nothing.

👉 Start here. SparkAI Academy. The future begins with you.

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Cheers,
Editor-in-chief | Emeka Ogbonnaya

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