Dear ICS Community,

It was a joy to welcome many of you to "Parent U" on Saturday, and to our Vision 2050 presentation in the afternoon. On the top of our wish-list is a STEM lab to allow students to experience hands-on engineering, design and technology projects. Do enjoy this documentary made by our students on their participation as the first Asian school in "STEM on Track" this summer! We now have an outline curriculum plan for this proposed fundraising target, alongside approval from Lands & Buildings. The proposal will incorporate Engineering, Robotics, and Formal Logic in Middle School, leading on to High School electives in Computer Science, Design & Technology with the potential for university partnerships and validation of these courses.

A question we have been considering is how we can ensure our students don’t miss their potential in light of generative AI, and this needs serious thought as it is complex. An important recent study has shown that Chinese secondary students who use AI for assignments see short-term gains in their homework scores, but disastrous effects on the exams that count for progression and university. This should be no real surprise to us, given our growing understanding of cognitive science:

• You can't "outsource" thinking and learning to a machine

• A deep well of memorised factual knowledge is even MORE important in an AI age than previously

• Research shows that reading on paper leads to deeper comprehension than skimming on a screen, and handwriting is superior for processing and remembering information