-- Hinksey Labs, a UK-registered education company running cohort-based business research programmes for high school students, has completed its latest cohort. Students produced original research on real companies while working through a university-level curriculum and training in the ethical use of AI in academic work.
Founded by Oxford scholars, Hinksey Labs places students in research groups of up to seven, each led by a mentor holding an advanced degree from an Ivy League or Oxbridge institution. Students are taught the methods expected of undergraduate and graduate researchers: how to frame a research question, build a literature review, evaluate sources, structure an argument and defend a conclusion under supervision. Work is assessed against academic standards rather than classroom ones, and students revise through several rounds of mentor feedback before a paper is considered finished.
"Most sixteen-year-olds have never been asked to defend a claim to someone who will push back on it," said Simon Kotlerman, Programme Director at Hinksey Labs. "That is the single biggest gap between school and university, and it is the one we close first. The first draft is always the easy part. What changes a student is the third."
The programme also brings students into contact with people doing the work they are studying. During recent cohorts, students met professionals from companies including Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs and Boston Consulting Group, along with researchers from Oxford and Harvard and several Forbes 30 Under 30 honourees. These sessions let students test their assumptions against practitioners before committing to a line of argument, and often send them back to revise a question they thought was settled.
Because each group works on a question connected to a real organisation, students cannot rely on a textbook answer. They have to weigh competing evidence, account for constraints a company actually faces, and accept that a defensible conclusion is rarely a tidy one.
A distinct part of the curriculum addresses how students should and should not use AI in research. Rather than banning the tools, Hinksey Labs teaches students to disclose their use, verify outputs against primary sources, and retain authorship of their own analysis. Students learn where AI genuinely helps in a research workflow and where it introduces error, a distinction most secondary education has yet to address directly.
"Schools are mostly arguing about how to catch students using AI. That is the wrong question," said Kotlerman. "These students will spend their entire careers working alongside these tools. Our job is to teach them to use them honestly, to check what comes back, and to know which part of the thinking has to stay theirs. A student who can explain exactly where AI helped and where it could not is better prepared than one who was told never to touch it."
Selected student work is published in The Hinksey Review, the company's open-access academic journal for young scholars, giving students experience of preparing work for an audience beyond a teacher. Hinksey Labs also runs Hinksey Clubs, student-led communities in business, AI and entrepreneurship; an annual essay competition on major business transformations; and AI Programmes, in which students build working solutions for real organisations.
"We are not trying to add another line to a college application," said Kotlerman. "We are trying to change what a serious education looks like before university, so that ambitious students can do real work at the point they are actually curious, rather than waiting four years for permission."
About Hinksey Labs
Hinksey Labs is a UK-registered education company offering cohort-based business research mentorship for high school students. It publishes The Hinksey Review, an open-access academic journal for young scholars, and runs Hinksey Clubs, an annual essay competition and AI Programmes. More at Hinksey Labs, LinkedIn, Instagram, Trustpilot The organization can be reached at [email protected].
Contact Info:
Name: Simon Kotlerman
Email: Send Email
Organization: Hinksey Labs
Website: https://www.hinkseylabs.com
Release ID: 89204590
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