Merry Christmas from SKOLA: A New Partner in our Educational Mission

I would like to wish our entire community a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

In England, the end of the year is a truly special time. It is a season for hospitality; we invite neighbours into our homes to share a mince pie, reconnect with old friends, and reach out to distant family.

I would also like to take a moment to recognise the profound impact Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having on education. Our teachers now have Gemini 3 as part of their professional work accounts, powered by Google. Here are just a few ways we are currently utilising AI at SKOLA:

• Multilingual Support: You may have interacted with the AI chatbot on our website. It handles over 1,000 queries every year, often assisting families in their own native languages.

• Quality Assurance: This year, our management team used AI to transcribe and analyse teacher interviews against a strict rubric, ensuring every member of our staff meets SKOLA’s high standards.

• Expert Lesson Planning: Our teachers used Gemini this summer to refine their lesson plans. For example, AI helped identify potential "interlingual transfer errors," allowing teachers to anticipate and correct specific linguistic challenges students face based on their first language.

Looking ahead to 2026, we are expanding these capabilities. We will be using AI to support our teachers during their onboarding process, helping them master "The SKOLA Way" more effectively. Our staff will also use AI to create captivating visual "hooks" to engage our students from the moment a lesson begins. In each of these areas, AI is helping SKOLA evolve. As a summer school focused on junior education, we use the winter months to reflect and plan for each skola.co.uk/summer.

We test new techniques and explore new venues during our skola.co.uk/winter school in January and at Easter. We reach out to new markets, reconnect with families and agencies, and think deeply about how we can improve our offer to you.

What we do has always been about intelligence. Our mission is to be readier, kinder, and safer every year. In AI, we have a new partner that is helping us ensure SKOLA courses are as good as they can possibly be.

I hope for peace around the world in the coming year, and I look forward to welcoming you to a SKOLA course in 2026.

Warm regards,

Ben Toettcher Director, SKOLA