In Ormiston Bolingbroke Academy in Runcorn, Cheshire, a class of year seven students are using AI software in school.
That is not normal practice, but they aren’t in a normal lesson.
The students are using the software to generate images of what a loan shark could look like, as part of a ‘lessons for life’ curriculum, the aim of which is to prepare them for when they leave school.
Part of this includes understanding how to manage their finances, and highlighting the risks of illegal lending – something which their teacher says is an issue in the area.
Lessons for life: Teacher Liam Hussey hopes to help his students navigate their finances safely in the future
What they will hopefully learn from today’s AI task is that there are no hard rules to how an illegal money lender physically appears.
‘A loan shark could be someone older, it could be someone younger, it could be someone from your local community, or it could be someone who maybe appears as a professional,’ Liam Hussey, head of PSHE at the school, said.
‘They’re getting a life lesson that maybe isn’t wholly impactful for them right now. But in later life, they will start managing their own money and they might need to borrow money in certain circumstances.
‘Our local safeguarding data tells us that we serve a deprived area, and we know that illegal money lending does go on in our area. I would bet money that some of our [students’] families have engaged with and are currently engaging with loan sharks.’
Classes like these seek to raise awareness of illegal lenders and the risks associated with borrowing, helping to prevent students becoming in debt in later life, as well as giving children practical knowledge on how to manage their finances.
The students’ AI-generated images have now been collated into a poster displayed in the school, raising awareness to other student and parents, with a QR code that takes them to the Stop Loan Sharks website.
The resources for the session were funded by England’s Illegal Money Lending Team, a public body which aims to prevent loan sharking using money confiscated from illegal lenders. An external company, Digital Arts Box, runs the class.
Poster: The children used AI to generate images of a loan shark, revealing that they may appear in many different ways – and then created this poster for their school
‘They’re actually paid for using proceeds of crime taken from convicted loan sharks, which I like, because it’s loan sharks paying to educate future generations to not use loan sharks,’ Cath Wohlers, the IMLT’s operations manager, told This is Money.
For Hussey, and other teachers looking to engage students in similar life skills curriculums, the resources funded by the IMLT offer an opportunity to get expert input.
Hussey said: ‘For the geography teacher to stand up and talk about loan sharks, or a history teacher to talk about drug misuse, it can be an abstract concept in a many cases. Bringing in that external expertise helps give consistent, clear messages.’
‘The fact that this was hands on and creative, I think made the students more engaged… and they will remember more from it as a result.’
The IMLT offers a wide-ranging array of resources to schools, both in the form of free downloadable materials, and funded programmes such as the one at Ormiston.
For primary school-age children, the IMLT highlights topics on a basic level, covering ‘the difference between nee