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Professor Stephen Heppell, Director of the Felipe Segovia Chair for Innovation in Learning at Camilo José Cela University, delivered one of the keynote lectures at the 11th Felipe Segovia Symposium, where he showcased how schools and education systems around the world are experimenting with artificial intelligence and new ways of learning. Visibly moved to return after a year of illness, Heppell described this stage as “a kind of personal rebirth” and defined the present moment as “the most exciting decade for education” since he began teaching in the 1970s.
The British expert began by reviewing examples of universities that are breaking traditional boundaries: fully open degrees in which students build their own pathways and narrate them at the end; secondary schools where students take university-level courses from the age of 16; adult-education centres with the authority to grant official degrees; and thousands of secondary students already enrolled in degree programmes at distance-learning universities. He also noted that many European countries now offer free higher education. “All this tells us,” he said, “that what matters is not only the degree itself, but belonging to a learning community; being, as happens here, part of an educational family with a shared purpose.”
Heppell illustrated this idea of change with images of schools from different continents. In Denmark, for instance, climbing trees is included in the curriculum as a basic skill under the premise that “if there are trees everywhere, the dangerous thing is not teaching children how to climb them.” In other schools, students exercise on nets suspended above the classroom, build classrooms out of books, or learn experimental physics using a large free-fall tube placed at the centre of the school. He also cited research from Germany showing that students who move during class—learning in zoned spaces, with areas for switching activities and standing desks—maintain attention better than those who remain seated all day.
The professor insisted that there is no single correct way to organise a school, but certain patterns do appear consistently in the most innovative projects: movement, play, openness to the environment and transparency. He showed the example of a “beach school” on the British coast where four-year-olds carry out environmental science projects using magnifying glasses, sensors and beach buckets, guided by retired fishermen over 80 years old. “What’s fascinating,” he explained, “is seeing the extremes of life—the very young and the very old—come together in the same learning project.”
When addressing artificial intelligence, Heppell criticised the narrow view that presents it only as a tool for personalising individual tasks. “The rhetoric speaks of individualised learning, but teachers know that learning is about what we do together,” he stressed. To demonstrate this, he showed how a generative AI system can design a collaborative project for four-year-olds—with different profiles and strengths—working on the Romans, offering differentiated activities and a shared final presentation before an imaginary “Senate” or “emperor.” “The important thing is not that each child gets a different worksheet, but that AI helps us create well-balanced teams and fun experiences,” he said.
Heppell also shared examples of AI being used to provide high-quality feedback to students. From a handwritten text by his nine-year-old granddaughter, the tool was able to return detailed comments, improvement suggestions that respected her voice, and a final message that was especially motivating: “I have read millions of children’s assignments; yours is quite good.” “Imagine what that means to a nine-year-old,” he said. He emphasised, however, that “we still need the teacher, the classroom and the notebook”: AI does not replace the human gaze, but amplifies the capacity to accompany and support learning processes.
Another example he presented was the use of AI to reconnect students with reading: the system can adopt the personality of a literary character, remember the entirety of their story arc and carry out a conversation with the student in any language. “It’s a wonderful way to seduce children back into literature,” he said. In the scientific sphere, he demonstrated how, with a single instruction, AI can generate physics activities for 12-year-olds, offering adapted versions in different languages—such as Somali—and automatically correcting responses.
In the final part of his talk, Heppell reminded the audience that SEK Education Group has already been a pioneer in many transformations: from “brain food” projects exploring the relationship between diet and behaviour, to the first maker spaces in Spain—where students built a Tesla coil that melted audience members’ mobile phones during the first demonstration—along with learning spaces designed by students themselves or outdoor learning programmes. “SEK has always stood out for doing what others were not yet daring to do. With AI, we must be just as brave,” he urged.
To conclude, the professor shared an exercise carried out with another AI tool that analysed school board minutes from different countries to identify the topics that mattered most to students. “It wasn’t grades, or fees, or even safety,” he revealed. “At the centre of their concerns was a single word: belonging.” From there, he delivered his final message: “Let’s use AI in our own way—not to isolate ourselves, but to strengthen collaboration, community and belonging. That is the future of learning, and you are in a privileged position to lead it.”
