AI in Schools: What’s Working, What’s Hype, and What Headmasters Should Actually Do

Based on an Infoquest Expert Voices interview with Johnny Egan, School Headmaster

The conversation around AI in schools has moved well past theory. Teachers are using it daily, headmasters are rethinking how they staff and operate, and the question is no longer whether to adopt AI but how to do it well. Johnny Egan, a school headmaster with experience across England, Egypt, and South Africa, has a clear-eyed view: start with the administrative stack, protect the youngest learners from premature tech exposure, and build toward a future where AI delivers genuinely personalised learning at scale.

Where AI in Schools Pays Off Immediately

For Egan, the immediate win is administrative. Lesson planning, email management, marking support, and resource creation are the areas where AI tools are already saving teachers significant time. The principle is straightforward: treat AI as a resource, not a threat.

Tools like MidJourney and Sphinx AI have changed how teachers build classroom materials. Instead of going to a single site for worksheets, teachers can now pull from multiple sources at once, generate differentiated materials across several ability levels, and tailor content to individual student needs, all in a fraction of the time. For a classroom teacher managing 30 students with varying learning requirements, that is a genuine operational shift.

Most teachers Egan works with are already using AI in some form, whether for planning, marking, designing rubrics, or teaching students how to critically evaluate AI-generated text. A small minority still prefers traditional delivery methods, and Egan accepts that as a generational preference. The direction of travel is clear.

Age-Appropriate AI: Why the Youngest Learners Need Protection First

Not every student should have the same level of AI access, and Egan is direct about the reasoning. Younger children need to build foundational skills without screens mediating every interaction. Social communication, attention, and basic literacy develop best through human contact, and the evidence from school closures during COVID reinforced how much depends on that face-to-face environment.

As students move up through school, that calculus changes. Older students benefit from learning how AI works, how to use it critically, and how to identify when content has been machine-generated. That kind of media literacy is becoming a core skill, comparable to reading comprehension or numeracy. Schools that build it deliberately will be ahead of those that simply hand over the tools without context.

Safeguarding in the Digital Age: Beyond the School Gates

One of the less-discussed implications of AI adoption in schools is what it means for safeguarding. Egan sees digital safety as inseparable from any serious conversation about technology in education. The fundamentals are unchanged: keeping children and staff safe. But the landscape has expanded considerably.

Children need to understand their digital footprint before they go online. When a child asks a voice assistant to play a song, data is being collected and stored. When they interact on social platforms, they leave traces that can be traced back to them. Cyberbullying is now harder to trace across some domains, and the challenge is compounded when children move from school to home environments where internet access is unrestricted.

Egan’s approach is to involve parents directly, briefing them on digital safety outside school hours rather than treating safeguarding as a school-only responsibility. The school can control the environment on site. It cannot control what happens at a friend’s house or a local cafe. That shared responsibility model is where schools are increasingly putting their energy.

What Headmasters Are Actually Looking for When Hiring Teachers

The traits Egan prioritises when hiring have shifted. Subject expertise remains essential but no longer sufficient on its own. He looks for a positive attitude, flexibility, and a willingness to go beyond the standard role, particularly in boarding school environments where teachers take on a much wider range of responsibilities throughout the day.

Critically, he now factors in an embrace of technology. That does not mean a teacher must arrive as an AI expert. It means they need to be curious, open, and willing to learn alongside their students. The headmasters who are building effective AI integration in their schools are the ones who hire for that mindset, not just for subject credentials.

The Leadership Principle Every New Headmaster Needs to Hear

For aspiring school leaders, Egan's most consistent advice is deceptively simple: never rush changes. When a process looks inefficient or illogical, the instinct is to fix it immediately. But most systems that appear broken have a reason behind them, and moving too fast without understanding those reasons creates new problems.

His most impactful leadership decision was a cultural one. After COVID, he joined a school where parents were kept at the gates, not allowed on site. He changed that. The results were meaningful: children benefited from seeing their parents during the school day, teachers built stronger relationships with families, and parents began contributing their time and expertise to the school. A structural change produced a reciprocal community, and that kind of compounding outcome is what thoughtful, unhurried leadership makes possible.

The Long Game: From Admin Efficiency to Bespoke AI Learning

Looking five to ten years ahead, Egan sees AI reshaping education in two distinct phases. In the short term, the biggest impact will be on administrative efficiency. AI tools will handle tasks that currently require additional staff, reducing overhead costs for schools operating in an increasingly competitive and consolidating market.

Longer term, he imagines something closer to bespoke learning at scale, AI delivered through glasses or earwear that provides dedicated one-to-one academic support. The kind of attentiveness to individual needs that no single teacher can sustainably deliver for 30 students simultaneously. The technology is not fully there yet, but Egan does not think it is far off. The trajectory from smartboards to AI classrooms has moved faster than anyone expected.

The headmasters and school leaders who treat AI in schools as a serious operational priority now, rather than a side project or a future concern, will be best positioned for both phases of what is coming.