Is the teacher still the ‘killer app’ in the age of AI?

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AI in education is often framed as a battle between humans and machines. Based on conversations with teachers, founders and investors over the past year, I believe the real opportunities lie in partnership, not replacement.

The OECD’s Digital Education Outlook 2026 frames AI’s role in relation to teachers across three paradigms: replacement, complementarity and augmentation. But there’s a second often overlooked dimension: institutional embedding.  Moats in education aren’t built on technology or data alone, but on alignment with pedagogical goals, curricula, regulations & governance, procurement processes and professional practice.

1. Replacement — The Productivity Play

In replacement, AI automates tasks historically done by teachers. For example, grading, summarising texts, preparing lessons, generating worksheets and providing basic feedback loops.

This is where much of today’s AI attention is focused. Tasks that were once labour-intensive can now be executed quickly using general-purpose large language models.

However,  technology that replaces discrete tasks can be easy to replicate.  Application-layer companies that don’t control workflow, data or distribution potentially become interchangeable.

2. Complementarity — Enhancing the Teacher

Complementarity is where AI does not replace teachers but meaningfully enhances their capacity. For example:

  • turning classroom data into real-time insights
  • tracking student progress against goals
  • flagging risks and opportunities
  • designing targeted interventions

Here, teachers retain judgement while AI expands insights and  sharpens execution. The result? More impactful and stickier solutions because:

  • the solution integrates with daily workflows
  • the value is tied to teacher judgement, not automation
  • switching costs rise as the technology adapts to context
  • integration with existing systems (LMS, assessment frameworks, schedules) deepens.

In Europe especially, where education systems are fragmented by language, standards and national curriculum requirements, this tailored integration is the key to durability.

3. Augmentation — Supercharging the Teacher

Augmentation involves human–AI co‑evolution: AI learns from teacher feedback over time, adapts to their pedagogical style, and augments their professional practice in ways that produce outcomes neither could achieve alone.

In theory, this is the next frontier.

But the evidence suggests caution. Recent cross‑sector analyses have found that human–AI teams often underperform the better solo performer — not because AI is weak, but because synergy is hard to design and requires:

  • structured feedback loops
  • task‑specific modelling
  • data that is pedagogically meaningful
  • long‑term usage and refinement.

These conditions are relatively rare — and do not emerge automatically from generic chatbots. Consequently, many augmentation efforts risk failing before a few succeed spectacularly.

This layer will be hard to build, slow to monetise, but potentially transformative if it materialises. The Holy Grail, but not for the faint-hearted investor.

But even the most advanced augmentation tools will fail if they don’t address a deeper challenge: institutional embedding.

The Overlooked Dimension: Institutional Embedding

If replacement, complementarity and augmentation describe how AI interacts with the teacher, the moat is arguably how deeply a solution embeds in the system.

Edtech solutions thrive where:

  • curriculum alignment exists
  • pedagogical norms reinforce its use
  • there are many rules and regulations
  • procurement frameworks are understood and effective go-to-market capabilities are developed and in place
  • teacher support boosts adoption
  • governance structures (schools, districts, ministries) endorse and fund it

Know-how about working with institutions and alignment with standards determine durability.

This is particularly true in Europe, where:

  • education is governed nationally and regionally
  • language and curriculum diversity creates product differentiation challenges
  • procurement cycles are long and complex
  • teacher autonomy is the norm.

A solution that is embedded institutionally — even if technically less advanced — will often outlive and outperform one that is technically stronger but misses the expertise around the institutions it is designed to serve.

This is where real moats are built.

The next edtech winners won’t rely on algorithms alone.  They’ll succeed by understanding that the best AI doesn’t replace teachers or even just work for them. It works with them.

Where do you see the biggest opportunities?

Looking forward >>

Abysmal eXperience

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I’m taking a break from Twitter / X for a while, perhaps permanently.

I’ve become increasingly concerned by the role the platform is playing in the polarisation of society, the damage it is engendering in the relationships between some people holding different beliefs, and the negative impact it may be having on the mental health and well-being of (especially but not only) some young people.

I was particularly shocked by the way X was used to spread mis- and dis-information during the recent riots in the UK and appalled by the behaviour of its owner in further fanning those flames.  Unacceptable.

I used to enjoy Twitter as a place to get the latest news first on a wide range of topics, with the dialogue often driven by some of the wittiest minds.  These days, it’s mostly an abysmal experience. 

I believe the company needs to develop and deploy robust procedures around mis- and dis-information not only to maintain its licence to operate but also to re-build trust with readers and advertisers. It’s a societal issue and commercially imperative to X itself. 

In the meantime, you can still find me on LinkedIn for education & edtech and Instagram for cycling (or even better: in a school or on the road!). As an end-user, it seems to me that both Microsoft and Meta are currently doing a better job than X in acting responsibly to maintain public trust.

Homeschooling is becoming mainstream

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Homeschooling is becoming mainstream in many countries including the USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand, where demand is increasing and well-established legal frameworks are in place. In the USA about 3 million students (6% of total) were homeschooled in 2021-2022, an increase of 25% from 2019-2022 and a step increase from the trend growth rate of 2-8% per year since the 1990’s.

Why homeschool?

Research from the National Center for Education Statistics from 2022 shows that four of the five most popular reasons why parents decide to homeschool their children are social-cultural rather than academic:

  • concerns about the school environment (safety, drugs, peer pressure)
  • wanting to provide moral instruction
  • emphasis on a family life together
  • wanting to provide religious instruction.

In the meantime, growth in the market for education technology solutions, in part further stimulated by the pandemic, has ensured that good quality learning resources are available at scale in the home environment, thereby lowering this particular former barrier to homeschooling.

“Old school”, “new school”, “not school”?

The trend towards homeschooling reminded me of the scenario planning we had done at Sanoma about the future of education some 15 years ago, especially considering three main scenarios i) “old school” ii) “new school” and iii) “not school”. I had personally not expected the “not school” model to break through due to the high value-add of the professional teacher and the high economic and organisational implications for the family (typically requiring one parent to stay at home).  I had expected technology to underpin the further development of all three scenarios but had not foreseen the pandemic nor the increased polarisation of society at the time, which are surely factors that have made some impact on the growth of homeschooling.

I wonder what the trend to homeschooling might mean for homeschooled children and families? What impact will it have on public education systems and society as a whole?

Should we take the child out of the school, or bring the parent into the pedagogy?

School is in some ways already a limited intervention in the learning and development of a child, after all more than 80% of their time is spent outside of school. To what extent might approaches that encourage greater parental engagement in education help to support the learning of the child and help to remedy some of the social and cultural concerns that some parents have about schools?

It seems likely that more hybrid models might emerge, combining the professional and economic benefits of the school with the social and cultural engagement of the family.  Typically, an encouraging home environment, a high level of personal attention and more personalisation, tend to support learning.  Have we “outsourced” too much to schools? Especially in a world of increasing teacher shortages, might greater involvement of parents be part of the solution?

How big is the global teacher shortage?

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According to UNESCO in a report published this week, we need to attract no less than 44 million additional teachers into the profession to achieve universal primary and secondary education by 2030.

¡Viva la profesora!

Put in to context, that’s more than half the size of the current global workforce of teachers (about 77M) and roughly the population of Spain!

Hello, Goodbye

The gap is caused by two main factors (with the impact and underlying drivers differing significantly by country):

  1. Expansion as demographics push education systems to grow (42% of the 44M), and
  2. Attrition due to teachers leaving the profession (58% of the 44M).

About 1/3 of the total demand for new teachers by 2030 comes from Sub-Saharan Africa (15M additional teachers). This is driven to a significant extent by demographics and growing access to secondary education (62% of the gap is to fill new teaching posts). However 93% of the 4.8M additional teachers required in Europe and North America, are needed because of attrition.

Push, Pull, Personal

There are clearly many factors that affect teacher recruitment, retention, job satisfaction and productivity, often driven by local dynamics. Broadly, the report highlights several “push factors” (e.g. working conditions, teacher well-being), “pull factors” (e.g. remuneration and professional development) and “personal reasons” (e.g. retirement, health, family circumstances) that influence whether people join the profession and how long they stick with it.

Can AI solve the problem?

There isn’t going to be a one-size-fits-all answer to finding 44M new teachers in the coming years. AI can surely help in many areas, such as optimising the recruitment and deployment of the teaching workforce, and saving time on administrative tasks for teachers so they can focus on teaching (about half of the working time of a typical teacher is spent on non-teaching tasks outside the classroom).

However, beware of solutions that completely substitute teachers. The human teacher plays an essential role in the process of learning and coaching. Parents are unlikely to leave their (especially younger) children in the hands of a robot. Larger class sizes will likely exacerbate the negative “push factors” in the teacher workplace.

In my view, solutions that super-charge rather than disintermediate teachers are most likely to succeed.

Imagine all the Teachers

Imagine the positive impact we can make on the prosperity, well-being and sustainability of the next generation across the globe when we ensure universal access to primary and secondary education. On the other hand, imagine what declining levels of literacy and numeracy might mean, not only in a faraway land but in your own neighbourhood.

This is a high impact, solvable challenge. We should give it the priority it needs.

It’s time to scale up European edtech

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Last week, Brighteye Ventures, a leading European investor in education technology, published the fifth edition of its European Edtech Funding Report. It looks like 2023 might be the trough of the cycle that peaked with the pandemic in 2021, and there are increasingly strong signals of a resurgence in investor appetite in 2024.

Reasons to be Cheerful

  1. After a period of decline, overall new venture funding for European edtech in 2023 surpassed the levels reached in 2020 ($1.2B vs $951M) and the number of deals increased on 2022 (288 vs 256).
  2. About 1/3 of all global edtech deals took place in Europe in 2023 (a record high proportion, up from 21% in 2019), indicating a high level of investor interest in the European market.
  3. International private equity and venture capital investors are currently holding a record amount of dry power, with $2586B ready for deployment at the top 25 PE investors globally.

Resilience?

From a European perspective, “resilience in the volume of deals” was driven by a rising number of deals under $4M, with over half of the completed deals being done at $1M or less. 

On the micro level of individual businesses, this thinly spread funding might make some sense, yet on the macro level of the industry and the customer, it also highlights part of the European challenge, namely lack of scale. You have to wonder if something substantial and world-class will be built out of some of these tiny deals. Usually “recessions” (possibly a relative term in tech) are a good opportunity for industries to restructure, with strong firms building on their strengths and weaker firms going out of business in what is typically a healthy evolutionary process.

Enable and simplify the work of the teacher

According to some estimates there are currently about 27,500 edtech companies in the K-12 sector, obviously not all deployed in all schools, but it’s not uncommon for schools to use hundreds of digital products. Imagine the life of a teacher. Her first concern is leading a classroom of 25-30 children, which is no mean feat in itself. When she deploys a digital solution it needs to:

a) positively impact learner outcomes

b) be easy to use and

c) ideally save time that she can use for interacting with students.

A teacher is best served by a smaller number of well-performing and frequently-used solutions than a huge toolbox of occasionally-used options.

Build a European Champion

In my view, investors in European edtech should focus on increasing scale and building a handful of segment-specific European/International Champions. At scale, a European Champion has the resources in terms of talent, know-how and money to develop and deploy top-notch learning solutions, yielding excellent learning impact and delivering good financial returns. It’s my hope (and expectation) that a group of investors will take the opportunity at this early stage in the new economic cycle to take our industry and the services we provide to schools to the next level.