The teacher, the child and the difference we make  

In the second instalment of a two-part article, Darren Grech explores the future of education in the AI era.  

Discussions about standards, employment and artificial intelligence eventually bring us back to the teacher.  

Technology has repeatedly been predicted to make teachers less important. I suspect AI will demonstrate precisely the opposite.  

The good teacher notices.  

Teachers recognise the child who has become unusually quiet. They recognise the pupil claiming not to understand who is actually frightened of being wrong. They know when to explain something differently, when to demand more, and when to encourage.  

Teaching is extraordinarily demanding. We increasingly expect teachers to be subject experts, pedagogues, counsellors, behavioural specialists, administrators, technology experts and, occasionally, surrogate parents. Any serious discussion of teacher quality must acknowledge that.  

But acknowledging it cannot require us to avoid an uncomfortable truth: The quality of teaching matters enormously.  

I sometimes used to provoke audiences when speaking about education with a deliberately mischievous question: Where do we hide our bad teachers?  

It was a play on words, because it immediately raises another question: what exactly is a bad teacher?  

I never believed teachers woke up intending to teach badly. What appears to be poor teaching can have many causes: inadequate support, weak leadership, inappropriate deployment, insufficient professional development, burnout, or simply somebody being placed in an almost impossible situation.  

So “bad teacher” is an inadequate label. But the underlying problem cannot simply be wished away.  

Children should never be at the mercy of the teacher they happen to get.  

In Gibraltar, our size makes this particularly visible. Parents know reputations. We have all heard variations of the same conversation: Please let my child get Teacher A, not Teacher B.  

If professional practice varies so greatly that families believe a child’s prospects depend materially upon which name appears on the class list, we cannot simply shrug our shoulders.  

Education is too important to become a lottery.  

That was one reason I strongly believed in unlocking the classroom.  

Teaching has traditionally been one of the most private of public professions. The door closes, and something excellent, ordinary or occasionally unsuccessful happens largely unseen by other professionals.  

Opening that door is not about surveillance. Observation should be about teachers learning from teachers.  

Let Teacher B watch Teacher A, and let Teacher A watch Teacher B. Labels can deceive, and the supposedly weaker teacher may possess something from which the celebrated colleague can learn. Let experienced teachers observe newly qualified colleagues bringing fresh ideas. Let younger teachers watch the quiet mastery with which an experienced practitioner changes the atmosphere of a difficult classroom. The purpose is not to catch people out. It is to make everybody better. The best schools should be places in which pupils and adults are learning.  

So where do we hide our bad teachers?  

We shouldn’t hide anybody.  

We should create professional cultures in which difficulty can be identified without humiliation, excellence shared without jealousy, support provided before problems become entrenched, and accountability remains real.  

Defending teachers and demanding excellent teaching are not contradictory positions. Taking their craft seriously enough to expect continuing improvement is itself a mark of respect for the profession.  

And then we come to results.  

Every summer, politicians of whatever political flavour understandably rejoice at the magnificent results obtained: so many top grades, so many success stories.  

Employers, meanwhile, used to fuss about what I called the miracle of the magic grade C, the apparently miraculous line which, in the old GCSE grading system, seemed to separate success from failure.  

The old A*–G scale has since given way to numerical grades 9–1 at GCSE, but changing the numbers does not necessarily change the temptation to draw an arbitrary line and attach too much significance to which side of it a young person falls.  

Of course, results matter. They represent years of work by pupils, teachers and families, and should be celebrated.  

But I used to ask two different questions: How many did we lose along the way? And what genuine value did we add?  

Take a highly able pupil who achieves a string of top grades. Excellent.  

But what of the child who entered struggling to read and leaves able to function confidently? What of the youngster who might have disengaged completely, but discovers purpose through vocational education? What of the pupil whose examination grade moves only modestly, but whose attendance, confidence and aspirations have been transformed? And what about the pupil predicted a D who duly obtained a D? 

Perhaps nobody asks any questions. After all, the pupil was expected to get a D. But could that D have been a C with different teaching, earlier intervention or greater expectation? Could the C have been a B?  

Low expectations can become self-fulfilling.  

This is not an argument for lowering standards. It is the exact opposite. It means applying ambition to every child.  

Which brings us to value added, not merely as a statistical measure, but in its most human sense.  

Where did the child begin? Where did he or she finish? What obstacles existed? And what difference did education make in between?  

For Gibraltar, these questions matter enormously.  

We should recognise the considerable platform from which we start. Gibraltar has invested heavily in educational infrastructure. Our young people regularly achieve results of which they and their teachers can rightly be proud. Access to further and higher education has transformed opportunities across generations.  

But that should not stop us asking what comes next. The next stage of educational development cannot simply be about providing more education. It must increasingly be about understanding the quality and impact of what we provide.  

There will also be a number of young people for whom education, for whatever reason, is no longer working. They still have a right to an education, even if that education has to be provided differently.  

Out of sight cannot mean out of mind.  

Simply removing a profoundly disaffected young person from the classroom does not remove the problem even though it might be absolutely necessary to do so; it postpones it. If education gives up on that child, we should not be surprised when society encounters the consequences later. A small community should be capable of finding another route rather than allowing any young person to disappear from view.  

Our smallness should be an advantage. Universal access, after all, is not the same as equal opportunity. Children arrive at the school gate from different starting points, carrying different advantages and difficulties.  

We should be capable of knowing our children well. Of identifying difficulty early. Of understanding where exceptional teaching is occurring, and spreading it. Of supporting teachers who struggle. And of asking whether our academic, technical and vocational pathways genuinely reflect the needs and talents of all our young people.  

Perhaps this is where Gibraltar’s educational conversation now needs to develop. Not by dismantling what works, nor by pursuing change simply for the appearance of reform, but by being prepared to look critically at our own system.  

What are we doing exceptionally well? Where are the inconsistencies? Which pupils are flourishing? Which are not? And what are we prepared to change when the answers make us uncomfortable?  

A small education system ought to be unusually capable of asking those questions and agile enough to act upon the answers.  

Education for all cannot mean university for all.  

A society needs graduates, but it also needs excellent electricians, nurses, technicians, chefs, engineers, care workers and tradespeople. For too long, many systems have implicitly treated academic progression as success, and vocational education as what remains for those who could not manage it.  

That is both intellectually mistaken and economically foolish.  

Gibraltar’s size also means demographic changes can affect us quickly. Across Europe, birth rates are falling and populations are ageing. Changing cohorts have implications for schools, staffing, buildings and, eventually, the labour market.  

Our response should not simply be to reproduce yesterday’s education system at a different scale. We should ask what tomorrow’s children actually need.  

And that returns us to the fundamental question.  

What is education for?  

Someone employable, certainly. Literate and numerate, unquestionably. Capable of participating in an increasingly sophisticated economy, yes.  

But surely also someone curious. Someone capable of distinguishing evidence from assertion. Someone who can disagree without hatred. Someone who understands something of science, history, culture and beauty. Someone sufficiently confident to change their mind when the evidence changes. And someone capable of using extraordinarily powerful technology without surrendering judgement to it.  

We should study Singapore without imagining we can become Singapore. Learn from Finland without romanticising Finland. Examine PISA without confusing a league table with the purpose of schooling. Listen to employers without handing them ownership of the curriculum. Embrace AI without allowing technology to determine what education is for.  

The classroom of 2040 will look radically different from the classroom many of us remember. AI may sit quietly behind almost every lesson. Assessment may change beyond recognition. Children may prepare for professions that do not yet have names.  

But some things should survive all of it: the relationship between a good teacher and a child; the thrill of suddenly understanding something that previously seemed impossible; the expectation that effort matters; and the conviction that circumstances of birth should not determine the limits of aspiration.  

And whatever changes, we should retain the courage to ask two stubborn questions. 

How many did we lose along the way? And what genuine value did we add?  

The machines will become better at giving us answers.  

The enduring task of education may be to produce human beings capable of asking the right questions. 

Darren Grech is a teacher by profession and held senior roles in the Department of Education prior to serving as Chief Secretary of the Government of Gibraltar between 2018 and 2024.