– Saunak Ghosh, Co-Founder and CEO, TalentGum
A child debugging a simple animation, considering the next move on a chessboard or practising a melody is learning far more than a single activity. Each experience offers an opportunity to experiment, make independent decisions and work through mistakes. As education evolves to prepare children for an unpredictable future, these experiences complement and strengthen what they learn in school.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates that 39% of workers’ existing skills will be transformed or become outdated between 2025 and 2030. While this is a workforce projection, it highlights a broader educational challenge: helping children develop the curiosity, resilience, and adaptability to keep learning as the world changes around them.
Coding, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), chess and music offer uniquely effective ways to build those exact capabilities.
Coding: Turning ideas into workable solutions
Coding encourages children to break a complex task into smaller, manageable steps. Creating a game or animation involves deciding what should happen, arranging logical instructions, and testing whether those instructions work as intended. When something goes wrong, children have an opportunity to investigate and try again. A character that moves in the wrong direction becomes a problem to solve rather than a point of frustration. Age-appropriate, project-based learning makes this process deeply engaging, giving children a tangible product that they built themselves.
AI/ML: Understanding the technology around them
Children encounter artificial intelligence every day through recommendations, digital assistants and learning tools. Introducing its basic principles can help them ask sharper questions about how these technologies function. Early learning can begin with simple examples: how a computer sorts images, identifies patterns or learns from examples. Equally valuable are discussions regarding inaccurate outputs, biased information, and data privacy. The goal is to develop thoughtful, informed users who understand that an AI-generated answer still requires human judgment and critical evaluation.
Chess: Learning to pause and consider
Chess gives children a setting in which every decision carries immediate consequences. Before moving a piece, they must consider their options, anticipate a response and decide which risks to take.
It also offers a practical way to reflect on setbacks. Reviewing a lost game can help a child identify a missed opportunity and approach the next game differently. Guided lessons encourage children to articulate their reasoning, making the thinking process as valuable as the final outcome.
Music: Creating space for expression and practice
Music brings active listening, physical coordination, interpretation and creative expression into a single discipline. Learning an instrument requires regular practice, while performing offers a natural avenue to share progress with others.
Structured learning provides clear, achievable milestones without taking away the enjoyment of music. TalentGum’s curriculum serves as a registered Trinity College London examination centre, bringing an internationally recognised music education framework into a supportive online environment.
Structure matters, but so does the child’s interest
The value of extracurricular learning depends entirely on how it is delivered. At TalentGum, this approach is structured around our “Discover, Develop, and Shine” framework: children discover new passions, develop capabilities through live mentor support, and shine by applying their skills in real-world settings. Clear progression, continuous feedback, and meaningful opportunities to apply learning ensure that children move far beyond passively attending a class.
These subjects do not need to become another rigid checklist of achievements. Their true worth lies in offering children varied opportunities to think critically, create freely, and persevere through challenges. Whether writing a line of code, questioning an AI response, planning a chess strategy, or mastering a melody, children discover that meaningful progress comes through curiosity, regular practice, and the confidence to try again.
