AI in Schools
Reynella East darknet dump and Microsoft's Copilot Notebooks land
Digital Attitudes, 25 June 2026
The Thursday read is one Interlock leak page that turns the Reynella East College cyber incident the South Australian Department for Education flagged on 9 June into a 600 gigabyte parent communication exercise, one Microsoft AI in Education report and product wave that puts a no extra cost Copilot Notebooks and Study and Learn Agent inside every existing Microsoft 365 Education tenant, and one international award the e-Assessment community handed ACER and Open Assessment Technologies for the PISA 2025 round that is the same operating record the next NAPLAN procurement has to read.
Interlock posts 600GB of Reynella East files on the darknet leak site
David Hollingworth at Cyber Daily reported on Wednesday 24 June that the Interlock ransomware operation listed Reynella East College on its darknet leak site on Tuesday 23 June, with more than 473,000 files across more than 68,000 folders and around 600 gigabytes of data uploaded over the day. The published artefacts include international student and staff passport scans, cleartext password and username lists, contact details, teaching documents, school budgets, vendor contracts, financial reports, identification numbers, and seating charts. Reynella East is a public preschool to Year 12 school in southern Adelaide with more than 1,900 students, has operated international and study-abroad programs since the 1990s, and is the first Australian victim Interlock has listed against the 111 names the crew has posted since late 2024. South Australia's Department for Education told parents on 9 June that the school had taken its computer systems offline after a cyber incident, and the school had not responded to Cyber Daily by reporting time. Cyber Daily on the Interlock dump, 24 June.
Why this matters: For South Australian and interstate state school principals and business managers running the term 3 communication plan against the same Five Eyes warning frame the Tuesday brief carried and the post Kinetic Education parent letter the Wednesday brief priced, the operational read is that the 600 gigabyte set sitting on the Interlock leak page now includes passport scans the parent can verify on the same browser tab as the school's next update, and the question the next note answers is whether the school confirms what was taken, names the third party identity monitoring service the families can subscribe to, and gives the term 3 parent letter the credible position the "we are working with the department" line does not. For the South Australian Department for Education, the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner working the same incident against the schools privacy code clock that reads under six months, the read is that the first Australian Interlock victim now sits next to the Qilin Kinetic Education listing the Wednesday brief carried as a sector wide pattern the next parent body is going to ask the same question of, and the question the next ministerial briefing answers is whether the state's school cyber posture is recapitalised at the budget line the Australian Signals Directorate priced in the Tuesday warning or whether the next breach gets the same response cycle this one already ran. For ed-tech vendors selling school information systems, identity management, attendance and finance products into Australian state, Catholic and independent schools (Compass, Sentral, Schoolbox, SEQTA, MS3 Solutions, Civica, TechnologyOne, the Active Directory federation work for state departments), the procurement read is that the seating charts and budget documents on the leak page now name every category of artefact the school information system holds, and the vendor whose security posture cannot answer the cleartext password question the leak page is the case study for is the one whose next renewal answers a buyer reading the Cyber Daily story on the same tab.
Microsoft's third AI in Education report ships with free Copilot Notebooks and the Study and Learn Agent
Microsoft published its third annual AI in Education report on Wednesday 24 June with a 3,345 respondent sample spanning K-12 and higher education in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, Japan and Saudi Arabia, finding 92 per cent of students and education leaders and 88 per cent of educators have used AI for school work, weekly teacher use up from 42 per cent in 2024 to 74 per cent, 58 per cent of leaders implementing or scaling AI, and 41 per cent of students and 42 per cent of educators still naming academic integrity as the live concern. Alongside the report Microsoft announced a wave of new Microsoft 365 Education features at no extra cost: Unit Plans in Teach for standards aligned lesson planning with Copilot, Student AI Guidelines and Learning Groups in Assignments, a Learning Zone live classroom experience on Windows 11, Copilot Notebooks inside the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, an interactive Study and Learn Agent in Copilot Chat, and a free AI Literacy for Educators credential co-created with ISTE and ASCD and delivered through Microsoft Elevate. The features are in the preview communities now with general availability in the coming months, and Microsoft General Manager Education Marketing Matt Jubelirer framed the rollout as putting "learning first." Microsoft on the third AI in Education report, 24 June, and the Microsoft Education blog on the new Microsoft 365 Education experiences, 24 June.
Why this matters: For state Department of Education Microsoft 365 tenant administrators and chief information officers running the term 3 deployment calendar against the NSWEduChat, Corella and Victorian Government AI vendor lists, the operational read is that Microsoft has put a no extra cost Copilot Notebooks and Study and Learn Agent into the existing A3 and A5 entitlements every state and Catholic system is already paying for, and the question the next architectural board paper answers is whether the existing student facing Copilot tenant configuration locks the new agent behind the consent and data residency provisions the department's AI policy already requires or whether the configuration baseline gets re-issued before the preview community lands. For Catholic, independent and university IT leaders running the same Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 entitlement against the existing Anthropic and Google Workspace AI vendor lists (the Cogniti deployment USyd took to Microsoft Marketplace this month, the BCE Copilot rollout that landed in May, the Brisbane Catholic Education Surface line the system's IT team carried into term 1), the procurement read is that Microsoft's AI Literacy for Educators credential co-built with ISTE and ASCD now sits alongside the Education Services Australia AI Literacy for Educators credential the Sunday brief named, and the question the term 4 professional learning plan answers is whether the school accredits both or picks the one that maps to the existing curriculum cycle. For ed-tech vendors selling AI tutoring, AI lesson planning and AI marking products into Australian schools and universities (Khanmigo from Khan Academy, MagicSchool, Eduaide, Nurture AI feedback, Pearson Writing Coach, Brightpath, the Education Perfect AI suite), the product roadmap read is that Microsoft has just absorbed the lesson planning, study guide, retrieval practice and AI literacy categories into the standard tenant entitlement at no marginal cost, and the vendor whose pitch deck cannot name a clearly differentiated additional value beyond what the Copilot Notebook now does is the one whose next contract conversation answers the question the school's chief information officer just printed off the Microsoft blog.
ACER and OAT take the Best International Implementation Award for PISA 2025
The Australian Council for Educational Research and platform partner Open Assessment Technologies took the Best International Implementation Award at the 2026 e-Assessment Awards in London on Thursday 18 June for the digital delivery of the 2025 round of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, with the cycle covering 91 countries and economies, more than 900,000 assessment sessions, 54 languages, and more than 100,000 offline sessions delivered through the TAO Digital Assessment Platform alongside more than 800,000 online sessions. ACER Chief Research Director Goran Lazendic framed the work in the release: "At its core, PISA is about understanding whether young people leaving compulsory education are equipped for life beyond school," and OAT Vice President Corporate Strategy Miguel Prieto named the operational claim that "delivering PISA 2025 demonstrated how a secure, scalable digital assessment can serve every learning context." Consortium partners cApStAn and HallStat are credited alongside the two principals. ACER on the Best International Implementation Award, 18 June.
Why this matters: For ACARA, the federal Department of Education and the state assessment authorities running the next NAPLAN platform conversation against the Janison delivery model the writing test sat on and the Pearson contracts behind the New South Wales HSC and South Australian assessment platforms, the operational read is that the same TAO platform that ran 91 country PISA delivery for ACER has now picked up the international award for offline first delivery at scale, and the question the term 4 procurement paper answers is whether the next NAPLAN platform negotiation puts the open source TAO stack on the same shortlist as the incumbent or whether the existing supplier moves first to match the offline plus online operating model the award named. For state Department of Education and university institutional research teams reading the Goran Lazendic line against the PISA 2025 results due later this year, the read is that the same cohort that sat the 2025 cycle is now the term 3 Year 10 cohort the post NAPLAN intervention plan is being written for, and the question the next paper answers is whether the school improvement framework gets re-anchored on the PISA literacy and numeracy bands the cycle reports or whether the existing NAPLAN derived target line carries the strategy. For ed-tech vendors selling secure assessment, lockdown browser, online testing and digital exam products into Australian schools and universities (Janison, Pearson, Inspera, ProctorU Honorlock, Examus, Cisco Webex room based exams), the procurement read is that the OECD certified offline plus online delivery model is now sitting on the same shelf as the proprietary lockdown browser line, and the vendor whose product cannot answer the "what happens when the school's network drops" question with the TAO operating record is the one whose next conversation answers a buyer who just read the e-Assessment Awards announcement.
The Thursday thread is the Interlock leak page that turns a southern Adelaide K to 12 school's incident response into a 600 gigabyte parent communication exercise, the Microsoft AI in Education report and Copilot Notebooks wave that absorbs the AI literacy and lesson planning categories into the standard Microsoft 365 tenant, and the ACER and OAT e-Assessment Award that puts the offline plus online TAO platform on the same shortlist the next NAPLAN procurement has to consider. More on the operational read at digitalattitudes.com.au.