Currently working on his start up PathFinder, an AI tool enhancing individual learning experience, Amaan Ahmad is aiming for the stars in the Edtech space. Being awarded with the Southwark Scholarship in 2019, we were curious about his journey since, and asked what inspired him to change education as we know it.
“There have been a few inflection points in my educational life: First, moving from Lisbon to London when I was five, going to a regular state school in England. Second, taking the GCSEs when I was 14, which led to skipping almost two years of school. And third, self-teaching to code out of necessity.”
Continuing to learn the same things, after completing his GCSEs, wasn’t intellectually stimulating and Amaan ended up spending two years learning more about subjects he found interesting by himself. He joined extra-curricular programmes offered by various London universities and started his first business, producing print design t-shirts with his friends.
“I was doing all these different programmes, like university level maths at King’s Maths School, that enabled me to find the right environment and helped expand my horizons.”
Receiving a full scholarship to St Paul’s school, Amaan restarted his official education as a sixth former in the private education system. Missing out on some of the curriculum and being on a scholarship, was in direct contrast with the experience and advanced knowledge on subjects he was truly interested in.
“I felt this weird, both superiority and inferiority, complex. I was behind and I was a scholarship kid but then I also did so many other things I knew I wanted to do”, he says.
Starting Computational Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College, with the Southwark Scholarship award, was inspired by Amaan’s love for building things. Leaning towards a medical degree initially, a 3D printed bionic prosthetic school project, a mixture of both medicine and engineering, helped him take a different direction.
The next milestone on his journey came in the first year of university when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Both his parents lost their jobs as well as the house they were living in. This meant that Amaan had to start earning money to help support his family.
“The highest paid jobs were in software engineering at the time. But being in my first year of Biomedical Engineering, I didn’t know how to code. However, I managed to find a freelance work that paid what we needed and just had to self-teach on the job. It was messy at first but at the end it all worked out and I ended up working as a software engineer for Ocado throughout university.”
Being impacted by both state and private schooling, Amaan was still being pulled towards education and improving the learning experience. This, alongside his history of learning how to code on the job, led him to hosting learning paths, workshops teaching curriculum for specific job roles, helping others to upskill during the economic downturn.
“When I graduated I thought, I really don’t want to be a software engineer, I enjoy doing this stuff. I was really lucky to meet my co-founder at Imperial, a guy who I spent a month in Rwanda with, building devices to help local farmers mitigate the climate change.
We liked working together, and Sidharth, that’s his name, was a kid genius who knew how to code at the age of ten and age eleven was amongst the best in the world. Growing up in seven different educational systems, he also had a passion for changing education and that’s what brought us together.”
The two decided to design a school from scratch in 2023. Receiving the Polaris Fellowship from Entrepreneur First in London, coming with £10,000 award, Amaan was able to invest the first half into running his experimental school during the summer months. Keen to learn more and push this project further, he reached out to established entrepreneurs in the field including Sal Khan or Joshua Dahn and spent the other half on flying out to the US assessing the potential for his new business.
“I learned a lot about building education from them and the challenges related to it. I also discovered microschools, that turned out to be similar to the school we designed, and there’s hundreds of thousands of those in the US.”
Sometimes described as ‘the mid-point’ between traditional schooling and home schooling, microschools emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic. These small learning environments created outside of education systems can convene in commercial or non-profit places, private homes and other suitable locations.
“There are two main challenges to these schools: There are usually two or three teachers so the level of expertise in each subject is limited. However, using the AI tool we developed, the experience can be tailored to every pupil in real time. The second challenge is that kids are also limited to the social circle of 12 or 20 other pupils, and I’m convinced that what makes the difference in learning experience is the environment and peer connection. As soon as the kid finds a peer they resonate with, that amplifies their experience and ambitions, as well as the outcomes of what they do. That’s why we’re now working on connecting kids across schools with shared interests and experiences to facilitate this.”
After fundraising in San Francisco earlier this year, and securing financial support, Amaan is now relocating to the US looking to grow the team and bring his business to full fruition. We asked if we can expect his business to operate and bring changes to the educational landscape in the UK, “I’ve had some conversations but there are no immediate plans in place. We’ll see whether there’s an opportunity in the future”.
We are always looking for new partnerships to expand the scholarship scheme and strengthen local connections. If you would like to get involved, please do contact us at eba@southwark.gov.uk or call 020 7525 2895 for further discussion.
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