Attending the DEFI Futures of Education programme at Cambridge this April was a rare privilege. Five days seldom give back so much, but these did. What stayed with me most was the people in the room: a cohort of genuine accomplishment, drawn from across different systems and countries, whose own experience proved as instructive as any formal session. Those who led our discussions did so with real authority and, to their credit, real candour.

I came away with something I had not felt in a long while, a sense of having properly advanced my own thinking. We looked hard at how education is changing across the world, and I was able to weigh, throughout, what that means for our own country and our own schools. Artificial intelligence ran through almost every conversation, and we did not avoid its more difficult questions: its security, its ethics, and the line between using it well and abusing it.

I returned enriched, with resources and ideas I have already begun to put into practice at my own school. It was time exceptionally well spent.

Thank you for the DEFI Cambridge residency. It was a genuinely rare week. I look forward to seeing how the programme’s thinking finds its way into the world. Do keep me posted on what comes next.

The Cambridge residency did something I did not fully expect: it made 2030 feel uncomfortably close. Not as a horizon to plan toward, but as a deadline already in motion, demanding decisions now, not later.

What has stayed with me most is the quality of the thinking in that room. Peer learning at that level is rare, not because the people are exceptional, though they were, but because the conditions were right for genuine intellectual honesty rather than leadership discourse.

I found the DEFI Classroom 2030 programme immensely insightful and impactful.

Most of our work as educators begins with the pursuit of answers because that pursuit leads to discovery and innovation. But the deeper lesson from our week at Cambridge’s DEFI was that good questions are what lead us to good answers — and that is exactly what a group of school leaders from across India set out to do when we converged at Cambridge. For me, that meant returning, in almost every session, to the question I bring to each of our AI Core team meetings: how do we assess authentic learning — valuing the process, not only the product — when AI can generate the output itself? The impact of AI on education is an ongoing conversation, not a settled one. The week reshaped how I think about leading through it: my role is less about procuring the next tool and more about asking the right questions and designing the pedagogy — and the assessment — around them, so that AI becomes a genuine force multiplier for our teachers rather than a novelty. As Amin Neghavati reminded us, the future of education is not predicted; it is designed. I left with more questions than I arrived with — and I have come to see that, together with the intentional, human-centred approach to technology it points toward, as the most valuable outcome of all.

I truly enjoyed the deeply intellectual conversations during our sessions. I look forward to continued engagements.

My biggest takeaway was that the concept of multiple possible futures in education, rather than a single predetermined path, is especially powerful. As we embrace technology while preserving the core purpose of education, we are encouraged to balance innovation with equity and develop the anticipatory thinking needed for an uncertain world. It also reinforced my belief that futures thinking is an essential skill for young people, and that tools such as the Futures Triangle can help students better understand, imagine, and shape the futures ahead of them.

I am keen to explore the idea of “assessment futures.” Assessment need not be unilinear; technology can enable more intentional, personalised, and diverse ways for students to demonstrate learning. I am particularly interested in understanding how our current assessment beliefs and practices will hold, adapt, or transform through technological transitions.

What I have brought back to my work is a more deliberate temporal lens on decision-making, thinking simultaneously about the past that shaped where we are, the present we are navigating, the near future we can influence, and the longer future we are responsible for. That longitudinal view, combined with the dialogic virtues the programme surfaced, has changed not just what I think about technology and leadership, but how I think. And at this stage of my career, that is not a small thing to say.

AI is not on the horizon — it’s already here, and schools can’t afford a wait-and-see attitude. The shift needs to happen now, and it needs to happen fast. But the focus shouldn’t be on AI itself; it should be on the skills students will need for the future. AI becomes the tool that enhances learning within a redesigned ecosystem, not the destination. A systematic approach to redesigning how learning works — with AI embedded throughout — is less overwhelming than trying to “do AI” as a separate initiative. Crucially, both teachers and students need to understand that they have the agency to shape what this future looks like.

School leaders cannot afford to wait for clarity before acting — they must be willing to experiment and innovate, keeping pace with what industry actually needs. Technology integration and pedagogical alignment have to be part of the school’s vision and roadmap, not an afterthought. Technology must be seen as a core investment that serves the school’s purpose, not something bolted on. The order matters: pedagogy first, then technology — not the other way around. Moving with speed on adoption and investing seriously in professional development are non-negotiable. Finally, modernisation must be collaborative, and students must be active participants in designing the future of their own education — not passive recipients of decisions made above them.