With the change of season, ministers know they must get back on the front foot after weeks during which their opponents have made the political weather. The launch of a new, more generous regime for funding early years education in England should help. The first of September was keenly awaited by hundreds of thousands of working parents of children aged between nine months and four. As of now, they are entitled to 30 free childcare or nursery hours a week.

The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is right to stress that this is the biggest-ever expansion of early years provision – described by the Institute for Fiscal Studies as “a new branch of the welfare state”. Equivalent to about £7,500 per year, per child, this is worth more, to most women in full-time work, than abolishing their income tax and national insurance contributions. Working-age parents, particularly those with larger families, have been dealt with less generously by the tax and benefits systems in recent years than under the Blair and Brown governments. The UK has higher childcare costs than most leading economies. So it is right that parents of the youngest children are targeted with support.

Implementation will need to be closely monitored, however. Most of the new funding will flow to private providers. Ms Phillipson is a strong advocate for new nurseries attached to primary schools, but these are small in number. Families are being given additional funding, but not a new public service. The new subsidy will not cover fees in full. Many nurseries face shortages of trained staff, while the number of childminders – usually women working at home – keeps on falling.

While there are many good private and non-profit nurseries, as well as public ones overseen by councils, there is cause for concern about the way that this market has developed. As in children’s social care and special needs education, private-equity owned businesses control a growing number of settings. Last year, academics published research showing that privately run care homes were disproportionately likely to be closed by regulators. In children’s social care, the Competition and Markets Authority judged that private owners were making excessive profits and carrying too much debt, leading to unacceptable risks.

Ministers must ensure that such shocking failures are not repeated in the nursery sector. As a first step, Ofsted inspections should increase from their current six-yearly cycle to a four-yearly one – the same as schools. The current disparity sends a terrible signal about early years’ lowly status.

Another issue is the impact of the changes on poorer children who do not meet the eligibility criteria because their parents do not work or do not meet the £9,518 earnings threshold. While some vulnerable families already qualify for additional childcare, experts are right to worry that the existing attainment gap could grow as a result of a policy that grants extra funding to under‑fives from wealthier homes.

This is the logical but troubling consequence of a policy whose chief aim is to enable parents to work, rather than invest in early years education as an intrinsic good. The hope must be that rules change if these fears are realised, and that “family hubs” – which the Tories brought in after vandalising Sure Start – make a contribution to these families’ welfare in the meanwhile. Ms Phillipson has a lot on her plate. Extra spending on early years is welcome – but it needs proper oversight.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called for Kemi Badenoch to come clean about her claims of an offer from Stanford University at the age of 16, after former admissions staff said she had described an impossible scenario.

The Labour MP Peter Prinsley has written to the Conservatives leader saying she should lay out the specifics of how the alleged offer came about, given the doubts cast over her story. The Lib Dem education spokesperson, Munira Wilson, said Badenoch risked undermining trust.

Badenoch has defended her claim to have received an offer as a teenager in Nigeria from the elite university to study medicine, sometimes described by her as pre-med, even though the university does not offer that course for undergraduates.

Admissions staff have also said the Conservative leader’s assertion she was offered a place on exam results alone, and was offered a partial scholarship, would not have been possible, with no offers made on that basis.

Jon Reider, the admissions officer during the period Badenoch applied, told the Guardian he had been responsible for international admissions and scholarships and had not offered one to Badenoch.

Badenoch doubled down on Monday, telling reporters she had indeed received offers based on her exam results. “All I will say is that I remember the very day those letters came to me. It was not just from Stanford. I was 16, I had done very well in my SATs,” she said. “But this is 30 years ago, I don’t have the papers, and what the Guardian is doing is reporting on hearsay rather than talking about what the government is doing.”

Multiple former admissions staff and US academics have told the Guardian that Stanford has never made offers based only on SATs – US standardised tests – with no exceptions even for royalty or child prodigies.

Prinsley, a former hospital consultant, wrote to Badenoch to say her claims have been “called into serious question by people in a position to understand the situation, and I would be grateful if you could demonstrate that you have been telling the truth”.

He said the Tory leader should clear up whether she had applied to Stanford and whether a place and financial aid had been offered.

A Labour source said: “Honesty and integrity aren’t optional qualities for those who serve as the leader of His Majesty’s official opposition. The uncertainty surrounding Kemi Badenoch’s Stanford University claims raises important questions that the public deserve to know the answers to.

“Badenoch needs to come clean about what’s happened here and whether she’s been telling the truth to the British people.”

Wilson also wrote to Badenoch saying she should come clean. “If Kemi Badenoch cares about restoring trust, she should start by explaining her own academic record,” she said. “Failing to come clean over these allegations would send a message to the thousands of pupils who just received their exam results that their hard work does not matter and that you can just bluff your way to the top.”

This is the second installment in the “1,000 Days of AI” series. As an AI keynote speaker and strategic advisor on AI university strategy, I’ve seen firsthand how generative AI is transforming education — and why aligning with the future of learning is now a leadership imperative.

I’m starting with education, not because it was the most disrupted, but because it was the first to show us what disruption actually looks like in real time.

Why start here?

Education is upstream to everything. Every future engineer, policymaker, manager and founder is shaped by what happens in a classroom, a lecture hall or a late-night interaction with a search engine. When generative AI arrived, education didn’t have the luxury to wait. It was forced to adapt on the fly.

ChatGPT didn’t quietly enter higher education. It detonated. Assignments unraveled. Grading frameworks collapsed. Students accessed polished answers in seconds. Faculty were blindsided. Institutional responses were reactive, inconsistent and exposed deep fractures in how learning was being defined and delivered.

The idea that education meant memorization and regurgitation cracked almost overnight.

Related: How AI Is Transforming Education Forever — and What It Means for the Next Generation of Thinkers

AI in education didn’t break higher ed — It exposed the disconnect

Long before AI, colleges were already straining under somewhat outdated models — rigid lectures, static syllabi, compliance-heavy assessments and a widening chasm between classroom instruction and workforce reality. Students were evolving faster than the systems designed to serve them.

Generative AI made that gap impossible to ignore. Within months of its release, a majority of students admitted to using ChatGPT or similar tools for coursework. Meanwhile, most college presidents acknowledged they had no formal AI policy in place. The dissonance was loud, and it created not just urgency, but opportunity.

In the past year, I’ve partnered with some of the largest education systems in the world to help develop their AI strategies. We co-developed governance frameworks, launched executive working groups, crafted responsible use guidelines and trained thousands of faculty across campuses. The goal wasn’t just to respond; it was to lead.

At the same time, I’ve worked with community colleges — the frontline of workforce development. These institutions feel disruption first and move fastest. I’ve helped their leaders connect generative AI to student outcomes, integrate tools into classroom experimentation and align innovation with workforce readiness and equity.

Whether it’s a flagship university or a high-impact college, the principle is the same: Strategy must align with people, culture and mission. The institutions making the biggest strides aren’t the ones with perfect AI plans. They’re the ones willing to move while others wait. This momentum is powered by intrapreneurship on the inside, and increasingly, by student-driven entrepreneurship on the outside.

Students are becoming entrepreneurs

Students aren’t waiting for permission; they’re reinventing how learning works. They adapt quickly, embrace emerging technologies and experiment boldly. Some might call it cheating. I’d call it testing the system.

Today’s students no longer see education as a linear path to a degree. They see it as a launchpad for ideas.

They’re using not just ChatGPT, but a full arsenal of AI tools — Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and more — to write business plans, generate branding, build MVPs and pressure-test real-world ideas. In fact, some aren’t just using tools; they’re creating their own. They’re not waiting to be taught. They’re teaching themselves how to build, launch and iterate.

And yes, some of it is used for shortcuts. For cutting corners. For getting around assignments. Academic integrity is a real issue and one that institutions must address. But it’s also a signal that the system itself needs to evolve. These students are not just bypassing rules — they’re stress-testing the relevance of education as it exists today. And this is where intrapreneurs inside the system become critical to bridging the gap.

Related: Why We Shouldn’t Fear AI in Education (and How to Use It Effectively)

Intrapreneurs are moving institutions forward

We all know that innovation rarely happens in the corner offices. The most powerful change isn’t coming from executive memos. It’s coming from the ground up.

I’ve seen faculty members redesign assessments to include AI. Academic advisors build GPT-powered chatbots for student support. Department chairs test automated grading workflows while central IT is still writing policy. These are intrapreneurs — internal innovators leading with agility.

My work has always been to help them scale and to get out of their way. Real transformation happens when governance, incentives and innovation align — and when execution is taken seriously.

What institutions are doing that works

Here are five moves I’ve seen deliver the greatest impact across leadership, faculty and students alike.

1. Accept that change is inevitable: Ignoring, shaming or regulating innovation won’t stop it. Institutions must choose to engage with change, not resist it.

2. Acknowledge that learning is now co-created: In many cases, students are more fluent in new tools than faculty. It may feel awkward — but that discomfort is the birthplace of co-creation and collaborative innovation.

3. Support intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship: Encourage faculty and staff to experiment internally while also supporting students who are launching startups or prototyping ideas using AI.

Institutions that move now are defining the next decade of learning. That doesn’t mean ignoring issues of academic integrity or the risks of cognitive offloading — we don’t know what we don’t know. But that uncertainty should inform us, not paralyze us.

The institutions that will thrive in the next 1,000 days aren’t those with the most tech. They’re the ones that create space to adapt, listen and lead from every level — through both intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship.

Related: How AI, Funding Cuts and Shifting Skills Are Redefining Education — and What It Means for the Future of Work

Leadership is no longer a title; it’s a posture. Every instructor redesigning a course, every student experimenting with AI, every staffer who builds a better workflow is shaping the future of education.

According to the World Economic Forum, over 40% of core job skills will shift in the next five years. That’s not a prediction — it’s a mandate.

The only way forward is to build systems that learn as fast as the people in them. Presidents and provosts can provide vision, but it’s intrapreneurs who will make it real. Transformation won’t be dictated from above. It will be powered from within.

AI is not the end. It’s the beginning of a new way of learning and a new kind of leadership.

Coming next in the “1,000 Days of AI” series: Higher education wasn’t ready for AI, but students forced the conversation. K-12 is even more essential because critical thinking, ethical reasoning and digital fluency must begin long before college.