S1E8: Priya Lakhani on our 'inadequate' education system

Priya Lakhani, OBE, is the founder and CEO of Century Tech, an award-winning Artificial Intelligence Ed Tech company. Century is the global leader in AI-powered learning tools for schools and families, working in dozens of countries across the world. She is also the author of a book called INADEQUATE: THE SYSTEM FAILING OUR TEACHERS AND YOUR CHILDREN, recently published by John Catt. Reviewing the book, Sir Anthony Seldon wrote: “Priya Lakhani is a visionary thinker. Yesterday, her words seemed speculative. Today, they are coming into being. Tomorrow, educators, parents and politicians will be left behind if they haven’t listened to her.” In 2008, Priya left her job as a barrister to set up a philanthropic cooking sauce company. Through its charitable foundation, Masala Masala provided millions of meals and thousands of vaccinations to the underprivileged in India and Africa, and funded several schools. A few years later, Priya pivoted again, this time setting up Century Tech. In 2018, Century won the prestigious MIT SOLVE award for Education, and in 2019 Priya was named Economic Innovator of the year by The Spectator. Priya embodies many of the autodidactic dispositions that we want all young people to leave school with: she is a gifted communicator with a strong moral purpose, somebody who doesn’t take no for an answer and who is able to retrain and gain mastery of new knowledge and skills in a short space of time, under her own steam. This is a fascinating conversation in which we explore why we need to embrace learning to learn; the importance of fighting for education, and not taking no for an answer; and the transformative potential of AI in education. The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter.