Why I Built an AI Extramural for a School That Hadn't Opened Yet

 

A brand-new primary school here in Gauteng doesn't open its doors until January. But by the time its first learners arrive, it will already have an AI and digital citizenship programme waiting for them — because someone went looking for one before the school even had a finished fees page.

That's the short version. Here's how it actually happened.

It started with a ChatGPT search, not a Google one

Someone on the school's team was putting together their list of extramural providers — the same way any new primary school lines up karate coaches, art teachers, and swimming instructors. But they needed something none of the traditional options cover: AI literacy and digital citizenship for primary-age learners.

So they asked ChatGPT who could do it in their area. My name came back.

That's the moment that pushed me to start this blog. If AI tools are already the front door people are walking through to find providers like me, I wanted to make sure there was somewhere solid on the other side of that door — not just a listing, but actual thinking, actual curriculum, actual answers to the questions a school or parent would ask next.

Designing for kids who don't exist yet, at a school that isn't open yet

There was no pilot group to test on, no existing class WhatsApp to survey, no current cohort to ask "what do you already know about AI?" I was designing a term-by-term foundational curriculum for two age bands across the senior primary phase, based on where I judged South African primary learners to actually be, not where a generic international curriculum assumes they are.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A lot of "AI literacy for kids" content is written for contexts with different device access, different home internet, different starting assumptions. Building this properly meant designing around the real digital access and everyday life of South African families — including the many households where a smartphone, not a laptop, is the primary device.

What a programme like this actually is — and isn't

Many new schools work on a provider-marketplace model for extramurals: the school lists approved outside providers, and parents choose and pay directly, the same way they would for any other extramural. The school isn't paying a flat fee for a package handed over — it's a relationship built directly with the families who opt in, term by term, for a full year.

That structure shaped the proposal itself. I wrote it in two parts: one section for the school, focused on credibility and safeguarding — who is teaching their learners, and how; and one section aimed at parents, explaining in plain terms what their child would actually be learning and why it matters.

Why this is a pilot, not just a project

I'm treating this as the founding pilot for something bigger: a "shelf product" version of the programme that other facilitators could eventually run elsewhere, without needing me in the room. This first school gets the full, hands-on version. Everything I learn running it — what lands with a younger class, what clicks with an older one, what parents actually ask about — becomes the foundation for that next version.

It's also, frankly, the proof I'll need. AI literacy as an extramural category doesn't have an established track record the way karate or coding does yet. The next school I approach is going to want to see that it works somewhere real before they take a chance on it. This pilot is where that evidence gets built.

The bigger point

A school that doesn't exist yet found a provider it needed by asking an AI. That's not a novelty — it's very likely how a growing number of decisions, big and small, are already getting made. This blog is me taking that seriously: writing the kind of specific, honest, South African-grounded content about AI and education that I'd want surfaced if I were the one asking the question.

More posts coming on what's actually in the curriculum, what South African classrooms are up against right now, and what I think parents should actually be asking their child's school about AI.

— PatienceR