EP13 ’AI Won’t Wait for Our Education System to Catch Up’ — Tatler-Nominated Headteacher Suzannah Cryer

How do you prepare a child for a world that nobody has experienced before?

Artificial intelligence is transforming how people learn, work and communicate. The skills employers demand are changing, misinformation is becoming increasingly difficult to detect, and today's children could eventually enter careers that don't yet exist.

So is our education system changing quickly enough?

In this episode of the Maverick School Podcast, Karl sits down with Suzannah Cryer, Head of Highfield and Brookham School, to explore one of the defining educational questions of our time: what should schools actually be preparing young people for in the age of AI?

Suzannah is a highly respected educational leader with more than 17 years' experience spanning mainstream education, SEND, primary and secondary settings. Her innovative leadership has seen her shortlisted for Tatler's Best Head of a Prep School.

She also helped co-author an ambitious white paper submitted to the Department for Education calling for curriculum reform that responds to technological and societal change while protecting the distinctly human capabilities that could become increasingly valuable in an AI-driven world.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Karl and Suzannah explore:

🎓 Why the exam system may be measuring the wrong things — and the radically different ways we could assess young people instead

💼 What leading businesses actually want from the next generation of employees — and why exam results might only tell part of the story

🤖 Why banning AI from the classroom could spectacularly backfire — leaving young people less prepared for the very workplaces they're about to enter

🧠 The huge bottleneck nobody can ignore if we genuinely want every young person to receive a high-quality AI education

📱 The hidden social crisis playing out amongst young people — and why technology may be making an already difficult problem even harder

This isn't a conversation about tearing down the education system or blaming teachers.

It's about recognising that schools and educators are being asked to prepare young people for circumstances that previous generations never faced — and asking whether the structures surrounding them are evolving quickly enough.

Because the world has changed.

Education must do too.

If you're a young person trying to understand the future, or a parent, educator or employer thinking about how we prepare the next generation for it, this is an episode you won't want to miss.

LinkedIn: Suzannah Cryer

Suzannah’s White Paper: https://highfieldandbrookham.co.uk/app/uploads/2026/06/White-Paper-Education-for-a-Changing-Society.pdf