Only one in five think school is getting our kids ready.

A sobering number this week, out of a big new study. Only one in five people think our schools, colleges and universities are doing a good job of getting young people ready for an AI world.

The same study found young people using AI constantly, while the thing employers most want out of it, creative thinking, is the one today's tools can't reliably deliver.

I don't take that as a reason to panic. I take it as permission. If four out of five of us can feel that the current model isn't built for the world that's coming, then fiddling at the edges of it won't help.

So the school is a redesign, not a fresh coat of paint. Two hours of AI-tutored foundations in the morning, then four hours on the things a machine has no grip on, because a machine can compute but it cannot wonder and it cannot care. The afternoon is where kids speak to a room of adults, run a market stall on a real budget, train for a half marathon, sit in a yarning circle with an Elder. It's where children become, in the words of the paper, "the main characters of their own lives" instead of an audience for the AI's.

I've stood under enough "this year we'll really lift outcomes" banners to spot a fresh coat of paint when I see one.

Read all about the new AI-based primary school at www.primarai.com.au/theprimaraischool