Steph McGovern

Yeah, that's so true because I know with the Middlesbrough Football Club, obviously a much better one.

They've got an amazing foundation and it's absolutely, you know, they do things like do parents' evenings in the football club, you know, to give that incentive as well to parents who might be disengaged with their education system, you know, a chance to go and see the football club as well.

And, I mean, you shouldn't need to do that, but that's where we are with things at the moment, you know.

There's just one other thing I wanted to ask you about before we wrap things up.

We had Mark Warner on the show recently, who is the founder of Faculty AI.

So, you know, this unicorn AI business set up in Britain, recently bought by Accenture or in the process of being for billions.

Yeah.

And he's got a three-year-old and I said to him, what do you think your three-year-old should be learning about now?

Like, has your view changed?

And this comes to your point about numeracy and literacy.

Because he said,

AI and computers are going to do all of that.

What I would be telling my three-year-old to do, he said, which breaks his heart as a mathematician, is not to focus on all of that, but to focus purely on creativity and communication and all of that.

Is there a danger we might be out of date in our thinking about the most important things coming out of education?

Right.

So when you see Pat McFadden and Bridget Phillips and Next, you need to say to them, get this curriculum sorted and let's get Ofsted to judge them on these things and not just on maths and English.

That's what I think and all the other things that they have to do.

Right.

I should let you get back to your life, Alan.

I wonder if it's quite funny having two Northerners who've referred to the North so often in this.