Published by Olympus Learning | March 2026
In late 2025, the ABC published an investigation that sent a chill through NSW school communities: students across the state were being accused of using artificial intelligence to write their assignments — and in many cases, the accusations were wrong. AI detection software, which schools had adopted rapidly in response to the explosion of tools like ChatGPT, was generating false positives at a rate that experts described as alarming. Students who had written their work entirely themselves were being told their assignments showed signs of AI generation.
What the Investigation Found
The ABC’s investigation documented multiple cases of NSW students — including high-achieving students with no history of academic misconduct — receiving formal warnings or having their marks withheld because AI detection software flagged their work.
In several cases, students and parents who challenged the findings were able to demonstrate, through drafts, notes, and timestamps, that the work was entirely the student’s own. But the process of challenging a finding was stressful, time-consuming, and in some cases damaging to the student’s relationship with their school.
The fundamental problem is that AI detection software is not reliable. The tools currently available — including the most widely used commercial products — have been shown in multiple independent studies to produce false positive rates that are unacceptably high, particularly for students who write in formal, structured English.
Ironically, students who write well are sometimes more likely to be flagged, because their writing shares stylistic characteristics with AI-generated text: clear structure, varied sentence length, and precise vocabulary.
What Are NESA’s Rules?
NESA — the NSW Education Standards Authority — has published guidelines on the use of AI in HSC assessments. The rules are clear: students may not use AI tools to generate content that is submitted as their own work.
This applies to essays, creative writing, research tasks, and other assessments. The use of AI to generate ideas, outlines, or drafts that are then submitted without substantial original work by the student constitutes academic misconduct.
However, NESA has also been explicit that schools must have evidence of misconduct before taking action — and that AI detection software alone does not constitute sufficient evidence. Schools are required to consider the full context of a student’s work, including their known writing ability, their drafting process, and any other relevant factors.
What Does This Mean for Your Child?
The most important protection against a false accusation of AI cheating is a demonstrable record of genuine writing skill. A student who has developed strong writing abilities over time — who can produce well-structured, sophisticated work under exam conditions — is in a much stronger position than a student whose writing is inconsistent or who has no history of producing work at the standard of their submitted assignments.
This is one of the reasons why writing skills deserve sustained attention throughout a student’s schooling, not just in the final years of high school.
A student who has been developing their writing since primary school, who has a clear and consistent voice, and who can demonstrate their writing process through drafts and notes, is well protected against the kind of false accusations that have been making headlines.
There is also a practical lesson here for how students approach their work. Keeping drafts, using school-provided platforms that record editing history, and being able to articulate their writing choices are all habits that serve students well — both as protection against false accusations and as genuine academic skills.
The Broader Question: What Is AI Actually Good For in Education?
The debate about AI in schools often gets framed as a binary: either AI is cheating, or it is a useful tool. The reality is more nuanced. AI tools can be genuinely useful for brainstorming, for getting feedback on drafts, for exploring ideas, and for understanding difficult concepts. The problem arises when students use AI to replace their own thinking and writing rather than to support it.
The students who will thrive in an AI-saturated world are not those who learn to use AI most effectively as a shortcut — they are those who develop strong foundational skills in reading, writing, and reasoning that allow them to use AI as a genuine tool rather than a crutch. The ability to evaluate AI output critically, to identify its errors and limitations, and to improve upon it with genuine expertise, is a skill that requires exactly the kind of deep knowledge that schools are trying to develop.
At Olympus Learning, our tutors help students develop genuine writing skills that will serve them throughout their schooling and beyond — skills that no AI detector can question. Find an English tutor today.
Sources: ABC News: AI detectors incorrectly brand high school students as cheats (December 2025) | NESA AI in HSC Assessments Guidelines