AI in Schools
Learning First report puts AI in NSW assessment tasks
The Wednesday read is the survey NESA paid for and got back this week, the Microsoft credential window that opened on Thursday for Australian schools, and the cognitive offloading argument the IEU just put into the staff room.
Learning First hands NESA the AI cheating numbers it asked for
Consulting firm Learning First released its AI use in schools report on Sunday night, drawing on a 2025 survey of nearly 3,400 teachers and more than 750 school leaders across NSW government, Catholic, and independent schools. The headline finding is that 80 per cent of lower secondary teachers and 73 per cent of senior secondary teachers who report student AI use say students use it to complete assessment tasks, even though more than 80 per cent of those teachers also say AI use is restricted on those tasks. About half of secondary teachers say they do not know how to prevent AI-mediated plagiarism. Around 80 per cent of educators whose students use AI say they are worried about the technology's impact on education. CEO and report co-author Dr Ben Jensen is blunt: "Schools need to maintain effective learning and the integrity of assessment, which means taking AI out of student work." NESA commissioned the supporting data and has confirmed the research will inform its next round of advice to schools. ACS Information Age on the Learning First findings, and the Mirage News write-up with the Jensen and Pearson quotes.
Why this matters: This is the first cross-sector NSW dataset to land with NESA's name attached, and the regulator now has a public mandate to write tougher guidance into the All My Own Work program and the HSC rules. For independent and Catholic school principals reading the survey, the operational read is that the gap between the school's written AI policy and what students are actually doing on assessment tasks is wider than most policy documents acknowledge. For senior secondary heads of department, the question this lands on the desk is whether the assessment design itself (take-home essays, research projects, multi-stage assignments completed off-campus) is still defensible against the integrity bar Learning First is now applying. The cost of doing nothing is the line Jensen puts in the report's closing section: post-secondary institutions, employers, and the public losing faith in the integrity of senior secondary qualifications. For ed-tech vendors selling AI-assistance tools into Australian secondary schools, the procurement question just got sharper: what is the product's position on assessment use, and does the answer survive a NESA conversation. The cognitive offloading argument the IEU put into circulation this month (see below) is now the same argument the regulator is reading.
Microsoft opens the Showcase School window with an AI rubric attached
Microsoft Elevate for Educators opened its advanced recognition application window on Thursday 21 May for the 2026 to 2027 academic year, closing 31 July. The Showcase School pathway requires applicant schools to meet minimum criteria on Microsoft's AI Transformation Rubric, including a Level 2 score on Policy and Governance, before they can submit. Two other tiers sit underneath (Pathfinder for AI readiness support, Beacon at the top for strategic implementation at scale), and the Educator Expert pathway is the individual-teacher equivalent. The program now connects more than 43,000 educators globally, and the Brisbane Catholic Education staff Copilot rollout has been the Australian implementation reference Microsoft cites in its marketing material this year. Microsoft's advanced recognition application guide for 2026 to 2027.
Why this matters: The application window is the operational moment for Australian schools that have been doing AI work quietly through 2025 to put a credential against it. For diocesan and AISNSW network IT leads, the Policy and Governance rubric is the document worth reading even if the school does not apply, because the bar Microsoft is publishing is the bar every other vendor will reference in their 2027 tender response. For the Microsoft side, the timing is not accidental. The window opens nine days before EDUtech Sydney and ten weeks before the VSA6 commences on 1 July, which is the bracket where Microsoft wants its credentialed reference schools highest on procurement search results. For schools sitting on the question of whether to formalise an AI position before the OAIC Children's Online Privacy Code lands on 10 December, the rubric is a usable scaffold. For schools already running NSW EduChat, SA EdChat, or WA ClassmAIte as their state-built tooling, the question is whether a Showcase application is worth the work when the credentialing is built around Microsoft's own product stack. The answer for most state-system schools will be no, and the answer for most Catholic and independent schools depends on whether Copilot is already in the building.
Loble puts the cognitive offloading argument into the IEU newsletter
Professor Leslie Loble's contribution to the May edition of the Independent Education Union's NSW and ACT Newsmonth is the cleanest one-page version of the cognitive offloading argument that has been building in the Australian sector through autumn. Loble's framing: students who outsource too much thinking to AI fail to build the foundational knowledge and "thinking infrastructure" required for lifelong learning, and the risk is sharpest for disadvantaged students most likely to use AI without the metacognitive scaffolding to interrogate its outputs. The IEU's positioning is operational rather than ideological: strong national standards for educational AI tools, adequate teacher training, and structured implementation that protects cognitive development. Independent Education Union NSW and ACT on AI and student cognitive abilities.
Why this matters: For Catholic and independent school principals reading the IEU column alongside the Learning First report, the two documents are doing the same operational work from opposite ends. Learning First says students are using AI to complete assessments, the IEU says the use itself produces cognitive harm, and the bridge between the two is the assessment-design conversation independent school heads of department have been postponing since the start of the year. The Loble framing is also the one that will end up in OAIC submissions on the Children's Online Privacy Code in the next nine days, because it puts the harm in language a privacy regulator will recognise. For ed-tech vendors selling adaptive AI tools, the marketing line about "personalised learning support" now has to land against an explicit cognitive offloading rebuttal in a publication every IEU member reads. The vendor side of the floor at EDUtech Sydney next week is going to have to engage the argument directly, not route around it.
The thread this morning is the gap between three documents that landed in the same fortnight: a survey of what students are actually doing, a Microsoft credential that puts an AI rubric on the school side of the procurement table, and a union column that puts cognitive offloading into the staff handbook. The schools whose 2026 budget papers carry the cost of reconciling all three are the ones whose AI position will hold up by December. More on the operational read at digitalattitudes.com.au.