Writing Archives - Niall McNulty

ChatGPT won’t fix education systems. But it has become shorthand for AI.

September 12, 2026September 12, 2026 by Niall McNulty

ChatGPT is a useful starting point for a conversation about AI in education. It gives people something concrete to try: ask a question, draft an explanation, adapt a resource. The difficulty comes when that experience becomes the basis for an institutional strategy.

For a ministry, education publisher or NGO, the question is how those capabilities fit into the work of delivering education. Who approves a generated resource? What information can staff share with a provider? How will a translated explanation be checked? What happens when a funded pilot ends?

My view is that ChatGPT-class tools can make useful contributions across that work. But the programme around them needs as much attention as the technology. Without it, institutions risk expanding production faster than their capacity to check what they produce.

What AI means for Mzansi’s classrooms

September 10, 2026 by Niall McNulty

On 10 September 2026 I joined the first of three national webinars in Human Studios’ Lefa AI series, What AI Means for Mzansi’s Classrooms. The session was Navigating AI, Learning and Safety in South African Basic Education. Lefa is a ten-month national initiative convened by Human Studios, with UNICEF South Africa and the DG Murray Trust. It is a sense-making process, not an adoption campaign: research, dialogue and practical conversation while South African schools are already using AI, and while national guidelines are still being written.

Niall McNulty speaking on the Lefa AI webinar, What AI Means for Mzansi's Classrooms, September 2026 — Still from the Lefa AI webinar, 10 September 2026.

I was a panellist on the AI and learning conversation. Shirley Eadie facilitated. My contribution was practical examples, with a limit I wanted on the table early: AI does not improve learning because it provides answers. It helps when it is designed to preserve productive struggle, work within a learner’s zone of proximal development, and leave teachers in charge of judgement. One public example was Cambridge’s Future Educator programme with KFAS in Kuwait, where STEM teachers applied AI through their own subjects rather than sitting through a tour of tools. That programme has no published learning-outcome data, so I offered it as a design story, not as proof of attainment.

Lefa is worth paying attention to because the South African questions are local: eleven official languages, a bimodal school system, teacher capacity that is already uneven, and tools trained somewhere else. If you work in a school, a ministry or an education organisation here, start with the Lefa AI site.

Related resources

What 28 AI Readiness Assessments Reveal About Schools in Ghana

February 27, 2026February 27, 2026 by Niall McNulty

On 21 February 2026, I ran AI readiness workshops with school leaders at Cambridge International Schools Day in Accra, Ghana. Twenty-four schools completed an AI Readiness Framework, a self-assessment tool that scores schools across five dimensions of AI preparedness. Twenty-eight responses were collected in total, as several schools had more than one participant complete the assessment.

The results tell a clear story. Schools are investing in hardware and tools. They are not investing in the governance and policy structures needed to use them well.