Can AI find the right British boarding school for my child?
In short the answer to the question ‘Can AI find the right British boarding school for my child?’ is ‘Maybe’. It could help narrow down the options to a selection based on a set of inputted criteria, and so could be useful to your family in creating a more manageable shortlist from the huge number of British Boarding Schools available. And yes, one of the schools on that shortlist could be the right one for your child. However, while AI has access to all information on the internet this is by no means all the information relevant in choosing a British Boarding School for your son or daughter – one of the most important decisions in your child’s life to date. Most significantly selecting a school is a human decision, made by humans about humans and based on myriad human factors that AI cannot understand, let alone distil into a simple summary. Put simply, Artificial Intelligence will always struggle to replace human intelligence when making human choices.
For example, AI can’t attend an appointment with you and your son or daughter, either in person or via Zoom, and assess your child’s personality to understand where they might fit in best and feel at home. AI can’t visit a school and develop a sense of the culture, the atmosphere, or derive an understanding of what impact a change in headteacher might have. AI can’t visit a boarding house and get a feel for how cosy it is, or whether it’s in need of refurbishment. And AI can’t pick up the phone to a school registrar it knows well to discuss a particular student. There’s also a huge amount of information that often isn’t on school websites, such as how selective a school is, whether they would consider one or two term stays, or how many places they have left. Also, parents and their children often have slightly different criteria in considering schools – can Artificial Intelligence detect the nuances in what each is looking for and bridge the gap? Ultimately, AI can’t easily answer the most important question – could my child be happy at a particular school and thrive there?
Artificial Intelligence is a tool like any other, and a useful one, but in making this most human of decisions it makes sense to talk to a human, with human understanding, vast experience and the strong relationships that come from many years of advising families looking for a British Boarding School for their child. So the answer to the question ‘Can AI find the right British boarding school for my child?’ is ’Maybe’, but is ‘Maybe’ good enough when making such a big decision?
