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Work Experience

Northampton School for Boys

Secondary Education · 5-day placement, July 2026

From Coding by Hand to Directing an AI Agent

A five-day, governance-first work experience placement for a Year 12 student, combining agent-directed software testing with ethical AI training, run entirely on mock data.

  • 15 out of 15 on the end-of-placement assessment
  • Three professional lenses in one week: DPO, QA Lead, Test Engineer
  • Zero real client records used at any point in the placement
15/15
assessment score
5 days
fully in person
0
real records used
Shayaan Ali during his AI Foundations work experience placement with GEN3BLOCK

AI Foundations Week

Shayaan Ali · Year 12 · July 2026

What was delivered

How the Week Was Built

Ethics Before Code

The DIODE framework (Define, Issues, Options, Decision, Explanations), drawn from the BCS Foundation Certificate in the Ethical Build of AI, applied to a real assessment exercise from the perspective of a Data Protection Officer reporting to the ICO.

A Real Engineering Environment

A properly configured Python environment and Git version control from day one, plus a manual data-quality investigation carried out with no AI assistance at all. The baseline skill was earned before the agent was introduced.

Directing the Agent

Shayaan directed an AI coding agent to write a full pytest suite against a real codebase, then reviewed the output critically rather than accepting it. The deliverable was a working, independently reviewed test suite, not a transcript of prompts.

Mock Data by Design

Every practical exercise ran on invented CRM and ERP data. No client systems, no confidential records, and nothing belonging to a real business at any point during the five days.

How it was structured

Three Professional Lenses in Five Days

  1. Governance

    Data Protection Officer

    Assessed an AI use case the way a DPO reporting to the ICO would: what data is involved, who carries the risk, what the realistic options are, and which decision can still be defended months later.

  2. Quality

    QA Lead

    Set the standard the work would be judged against before any code existed: what the system had to do, what it must never do, and what would count as evidence of either.

  3. Engineering

    Software Test Engineer

    Directed the AI agent to build the test suite, then reviewed, challenged and corrected its output until the tests genuinely proved what they claimed to prove.

GEN3BLOCK Certified AI Foundations digital badge, Beginner levelVerify badge

Evidence

Verify It Yourself

GEN3BLOCK Certified: AI Foundations. Issued to Shayaan Ali on completion of the placement. Verifiable and shareable on LinkedIn.

What people said

In Their Own Words

“Letting an AI agent run unsupervised means the human is not in control of the task. Blindly trusting AI is like trusting a student who is confident in their answer but has not checked the facts. It is essential to direct and verify the agent so the human stays in charge.”
Shayaan Ali, Year 12 student, Northampton School for BoysFrom his end-of-placement assessment
“Super proud of my son Shayaan for completing his AI Foundations Week with GEN3BLOCK during his Year 12 work experience. Instead of spending the week just learning how to code, he learnt something even more valuable: how to direct an AI coding agent, how to verify its work because AI can be confidently wrong, and why ethical AI matters just as much as clever AI. A future where AI writes the code and humans provide the judgement, critical thinking and accountability. That is a skill I think will be invaluable for the next generation.”
Ashish Kumar, CEO & Director, Web AllianceShared publicly on LinkedIn
“Thank you for welcoming Shayaan into your organisation, for making them feel so welcome and for giving them an insight into the real world of work. Students will be returning to us in September with their completed work experience reflection journals and we cannot wait to hear what they have learnt. A final huge thank you for hosting our student this week. We, and they, are so very grateful.”
Careers Team, Northampton School for BoysFrom the school's end-of-week letter
“Shayaan, you didn't just learn to use AI. You learned to question it and protect what matters, and that is the standard GEN3BLOCK stands for. Carry that forward: AI can write the code, but you decide what is right, and whose data deserves care.”
Charles Nwankpa, GEN3BLOCKClosing note to the student
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