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#EdufuturistsPodcast #AIinEducation #SocialMobility
What if the biggest problem in education isn't AI, it's that almost nothing we already do has ever been tested for evidence the way a new drug would be?
In this episode
In this episode, Ben and Steve sit down with Dr Yusuf Ben-Tarifite - A&E doctor, social mobility researcher, and founder of Ava - to talk about what happens when you apply medical-grade evidence standards to education. From email-blasting a thousand consultants to get work experience, to building the UK's first randomised control trial comparing AI tutoring against video, Yusuf makes the case that education's real crisis isn't too much AI scepticism; it's not enough rigour applied everywhere else.
About our guest
Dr Yusuf Ben-Tarifite is an A&E doctor and the founder of Ava, a platform helping students navigate the "unwritten curriculum" of applying to university. The first in his family to attend university, he studied medicine at Balliol College, Oxford, after attending a state school in Hertfordshire with no private tutoring. While still a medical student, he founded Aspiring Medics - now having worked with over 10,000 students - and was awarded the Diana Award by Prince William for his work widening access to medicine. Ava now partners with the Sutton Trust on AI-powered interview coaching and evidence-based research into social mobility.
We cover:
- Yusuf's journey from a Hertfordshire state school to Oxford medicine, and why he founded Aspiring Medics a week before Freshers' Week
- The Diana Award, Prince William, and "leaving the ladder down" for others
- Ava's mission: equality of opportunity, not just support for disadvantaged students
- Why AI is a continuum, not a chatbot and how Ava uses it as a Socratic tutor and interview coach
- Building an actual evidence base: doubling Oxbridge odds, and the UK's first randomised trial of AI vs video tutoring
- The real hope for AI in education and the risk of turning students into "AI zombies"
- Why writing and thinking are the same skill, and what that means for assessment
- "I call bullshit": how often is high-quality face-to-face teaching actually happening?
- The GCSE resit numbers that expose a one-size-fits-all system already failing thousands
- Why cognitive discomfort, like progressive overload in the gym, is the point of learning, not a bug
- The shrinking half-life of technical skills, and what it means for lifelong learning
Why you should listen
This is a rare conversation where a working doctor's instinct for evidence collides head-on with education's comfort with anecdote and tradition. If you've ever been frustrated by "it just works" arguments on either side of the AI debate, Yusuf brings a genuinely evidence-led perspective.
Chapters
0:00 Highlights
0:58 Welcome
3:20 Introducing Dr Yusuf: A&E doctor, researcher and founder of Ava
3:57 From a Hertfordshire state school to Oxford medicine
5:33 Who Ava is for: narrowing the gap, or equality of opportunity for all?
7:15 The AI revolution and democratising education
8:17 The Diana Award, Prince William, and "leaving the ladder down"
10:25 What still drives him after the recognition
11:44 From Aspiring Medics to Oxbridge: his North Star for social mobility
13:33 Mirroring the Edufuturists journey, and the shrinking half-life of skills
16:18 Why social mobility is complicated and why tech alone won't fix it
18:04 Inside Ava: a "training course" for university applications
19:38 The "who you know" problem, and levelling the playing field
20:56 AI as a Socratic tutor and why "the genie can't go back in the bottle"
22:49 Building the evidence base: doubling Oxbridge odds, and the UK's first AI vs video trial
23:44 Beyond the hype: the real hope for AI in education, and the risk of "AI zombies"
26:33 Outsourcing the doing, not the thinking
28:13 Teaching cognitive biases, and why writing is thinking
29:58 Is high-quality face-to-face learning really happening as often as we assume?
31:47 The longitudinal evidence question, and a one-size-fits-all model that's already failing
33:04 Why AI should face the same scrutiny as every other intervention
34:07 The COVID hangover, and why we're asking the wrong question about online learning
36:10 Is there a gap between policy and technology?
37:35 Cognitive discomfort: why learning should feel like exercise
41:28 Has the fundamental nature of learning really changed?
42:43 Quickfire Questions
Find out more about AVA: https://ai.theaspiringmedics.co.uk/
Thanks so much for joining us again for another episode - we appreciate you.
Ben & Steve x
Check out all about Edufuturists at https://www.edufuturists.com
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Chris Melia
Educational Developer, University of Central Lancashire