Did NSW just cancel homework?

Today's episode was made possible by our friends over at Revoh Fitness. Ready? And good morning! This is the Daily Oz. Oh! Now it makes sense. Good morning and welcome to the Daily Oz. It's Wednesday, 12th of August. I'm Emma Gillespie. I'm Sarah Siedler. His homework, as we know it, finished. Woo! Well, New South Wales wants take home tasks for Year 12, paused over artificial intelligence fears. It to make sure that when students graduate with their HSC, that they do so, having been assessed on the skills they have acquired through their skill links. We can't put our head in the sand. We actually have to test and adjust because of AI. With the National Reckoning on AI in classrooms already on the way, it could be the start of a much bigger conversation. In today's Deep Dive, we are going to explain the take home assessment freeze in New South Wales and the National AI inquiry trailing right behind it. I'd say it's like almost a daily occurrence that I think about how stuff I would be if AI existed when I was at school or university. Absolutely. Because the temptation, the challenge that it posed, like, I just, I really feel for school-aged children navigating through this time at the moment. And teachers, and schools, and every once in a while. Every once legitimately everyone at the beginning, middle and end of that system, is affected. Clearly, there is recognition here from the New South Wales government that something needs to be done. So, can you talk us through what they announced this week and why? Yes. So, the New South Wales deputy premier and education minister, PruKa, wrote to the state's education standards authority. Now, that's Nessa stands for the New South Wales education standards authority. Basically, they are established to monitor assessments and standards and teaching and practices right across the learning spectrum. But specifically, today, we're talking about their role in assessments and exams. Yeah. So, PruKa wrote to Nessa to urgently examine how AI is affecting learning. She's asked for an immediate step from Nessa to implement a moratorium, a temporary freeze, on unsupervised take-home assessments for. I don't think they should exist in the first place. Yeah. Well, I have always thought that for that. We don't do attendance. But specifically, PruKa is asking Nessa to consider this freeze for stage six students. When you South Wales, that's year 11 and 12 students. So, HSC. HSC students, high school certificate. So, she wants that temporary freeze for stage six while a review is carried out into the overall efficacy and system or state of play of take-home assessments at the moment. Now, what I say, take-home assessments. We're talking anything from essays to assignments, major projects. Basically, anything that you completed in high school at home, that's what we're talking about. Did you do a lot of those? Tastes. Tastes. I have vividly remembered, my mum will vividly remember me having so many midnight meltdowns overnight before. Assessments. Yes. I don't remember if I had them during school. I definitely had them during uni. I don't think I had them during school. Wow. If you're all in class tests, we're all in the exam. Maybe I'm just. Wow. Maybe I'm fake. Maybe I've blanked out that stage that was mildly traumatic in my life. I think you would remember if you had them. You'd have a couple of exams, a year, like mid-year exams, end of your exams. And then for year 11 and 12, 50/50. It is literally a 50/50 split as it stands. Okay, so there is a literal statistic that goes against what I'm suggesting might have been my lived experience. No, well, for you, seven to ten, who could say, but for HSE students specifically, so for New South Wales listeners, you'll already know this. And if you're not from New South Wales, the way that the HSE works is 50% of your final grade comes from assessments. In many cases, they are take home assessments, but more and more, we're seeing schools move away from that model. The other 50% of your final mark comes from the exams you set in October, the HSE exams, the big scary exams. Okay, so for listeners who can't see me, my hands were just on my head and I just had a huge realization. We're not only talking about those take home assessments where you get three days and you have to do it under very strict conditions. Like these are, like you have to write an essay and hands it in. Yeah, like you would get an assessment notification at school where maybe you had two weeks and it had the marking criteria and assessment framework. And it's like you've got two weeks to go on right and essay about a fellow. Okay, I just can't remember school is what I'm thinking. So I'm going to stop disrupting this podcast and we're going to move forward. So what you just said is that Proukha, Deputy Premier, she has suggested that that thing that definitely exists that probably did a lot of anyone's listening from my school, please tell me. That the 50% that is made up of take home assessments, she wants to pause that while they investigate what the impact of AI on that sort of learning could be. Yes, exactly. You've got it. And this comes from these increased concerns over a rise in cheating incidents across schools. So the Sydney Morning Herald has reported that out of 1200 total cheating cases in 2025 in New South Wales, more than a thousand of them were HSC school based tasks. So this level of concern over cheating really is overrepresented amongst that stage six cohort. Now, Carr set out her thinking in a letter to Nessa, which set a response quote should be framed around protecting student learning and cognitive development, not only on preventing malpractice or cheating. So her argument there is that if students lean on AI to skip the thinking, the research, the writing, the drafting, all of those skills that assessments are meant to build the value of the HSC itself will be undermined. I'm curious when we were at school, cheating was plagiarism. It came up through turn it in and it was that you copied something off the internet. Are we talking here about if there is like a very clearly written by AI that is considered cheating? Yeah, I mean, I think the phrase malpractice that the Minister of Education used sums it up that cheating has become this bigger concept than writing some quotes down on your thigh or on your eraser that you try to swallow. Yeah, on your face and you've got ink on your cheek. So yeah, absolutely. AI, I guess the argument is has changed so much about learning and as an extension to that has reshaped what cheating looks like. Yeah, and I guess to go back to what you were saying before that impact on learning, the critical analysis skills, all of the skills, I guess that people and students would have traditionally learnt by undertaking these. There's a suggestion here that AI is transforming and changing the way minds are developing now. Well, yeah, the concern from the New South Wales government is around something called grey matter. Now stay with me, but grey matter is the brain tissue responsible for thinking, memory, reasoning. And it only develops through you. So it's like a muscle think of grey matter as a muscle. If you don't use that muscle, it doesn't get stronger or you don't develop it. And the point from the New South Wales government is that if AI does the thinking for a student, they don't get that mental workout. There is a bit of research to back this up. There's a study from MIT published last year that's been cited a lot in this conversation and researchers there had people write essays either unated. So just from off the top of their head with a search engine. Yeah, that role dog, user search engine or with chat GPT. Now they monitored the brain activity of participants in this study and found the chat GPT group showed the weakest brain connectivity. And they also had the worst recall they struggled to quote their essays within minutes after writing them. So they didn't know what they had written. Their brains weren't activated in the same way that the other rest of the participants brains were. And this is a pattern that researchers called cognitive debt. So there are some scarier, longer term neurological implications here that I guess the New South Wales government is trying to consider. And I want to pick up on what you started around, which was that there is this broader conversation about AI in classrooms. But first let's jump to a quick message from today sponsor. I recently saw Revvo Fitness was $9.69 a week. And I had to double check that it wasn't some limited time flash sale ending at midnight and turns out it's not. That's just the price every week all year round. There's no lock in contracts or sneaky in fees and you get 24/7 access to every club. The catch was that there is no catch find your nearest Revvo at rav fitness.com.au. I asked you earlier about turn it in because that was the plagiarism software of choice when I was at school. Is that still how AI is being detected or AI uses being detected or how are they finding out whether students are using this. So you'll be pleased to know Turnit in is alive and well. - Well, supremacy remains. - Yeah, it remains the tool that is used the most in Australian schools for this AI monitoring and detection era. But beyond those plagiarism checks that you and I would have had our work subjected to back in the day. Today, you turn it in also analyzes the language used and whether or not that's likely to have been generated by an AI model. There are some newer tools that actually track typing buttons and draft history in documents. And that allows a teacher or a school to see if the document was written in one burst of time, if there was a big chunk of text copied and pasted, or if it's been built up over time. But it should be acknowledged that any detection software is patchy at best. There are plenty of gaps. These tools can miss AI written text. There's also lots of concerns around non-English speakers that sometimes genuine work by non-Native English speaking students is being flagged as AI when it's not. And I guess this is a big part of why New South Wales has landed on pausing at home assessments altogether because it's not a catch every case when it comes to these technologies. So as part of this overhaul, the government has asked Nessa to help teachers spot inappropriate AI use across the board because of course so much of this comes down to human detection. I'd say teachers might describe it as a gut feel. So as hard as it is for teachers to detect AI in some cases, it can be just as hard for them to prove AI use. Yeah, a really challenging set of circumstances for both teachers and students to try and navigate their way through there. And I want to turn to a kind of parallel conversation that's been unfolding in the headlines this week. I'm not suggesting that they are related, but they both go to some of the challenges that are emerging in school settings, nap plan results. Yeah, they came out and they were not great. Yeah, so last week we got nap plan results which told us about one in three students across all year levels didn't meet basic benchmarking in reading, writing, and numeracy. So again, across all grades, that's in 2026 compared to 2025. Reading scores were worse than every grade level in 2025 this year. But there is some suggestion that hasn't been really any significant differences between any cohorts since 2023. So small slips, no significant progress. And I think that is what schools and experts are concerned with. Year five, shout out, because that was the only cohort that did actually improve. But we heard from the federal education minister, Jason Claire, in response to these results. And he pointed to screens and social media as part of the problem. He said that there is some concern that today's students are not learning how to communicate properly because they are so reliant on technology. And New South Wales has floated a return to pen and paper testing as one solution. So New South Wales is, of course, we were talking about. I use nap plan is done on computers. Yeah. It's one of the few tests that is actually done on computers. I think you'd be surprised how many are still pen and paper or pencil and paper to be pencils where you are. But I guess are the thread connecting this New South Wales conversation and nap plan is that they feed into the same worry that the basic fundamentals are not being met. And that kids in 2026 school students are facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Yeah. But I guess we're talking about concerns about, you know, is AI making outcomes worse? And how do we navigate that? It's such uncharted territory, I suppose, and so many people are concerned. So then how did schools respond to this? I mean, you've spoken about on the AI level of how the government's responding, but how does schools respond? Well, many are actually already deliberately moving away from take home assessments. And they have been doing that for some time. I actually spoke to a teacher before today's pod who told me that they would be surprised if any schools were super reliant still on take home assessments and that at their school and schools they've worked in certainly the approach has been for everything as much as possible to be done in class or in exam settings. There is a school in Sydney Oak Hill College in the city's northwest that the city morning herald has reported told parents it will keep using draft checkpoints to ensure submitted work genuinely reflects a student's own understanding. I looked into that. That means that students have to hand in their work at various stages. That makes sense. I think it's really clever. So checkpoint one is hand in an outline, checkpoint two, and in a draft, then hand in a revised draft with visible edits. And then the final checkpoint is a finished piece, but the teachers can then see how the work has developed across all those different checkpoints. So I think that is really clever. But the New South Wales Teachers Federation, that is the union for public school teachers in New South Wales. It has made a submission to an earlier parliamentary inquiry into AI, arguing that a failure to plan and regulate is simply not an option. They are really calling for robust framework for equitable rules and standards before AI use expands further into classrooms. Those concerns, no listener would be surprised by they've been echoed across organisations, across all levels of government. And I actually saw this week, I was a bit confused by it, but I saw this week that the South Australian Premier announced a Royal Commission into AI. Yeah. He also announced a memorandum of understanding like a deal with open AI. Yeah. And I was just tiny bit confused where we are at. Yeah. So there are a few national conversations going on. It is confusing. First of all, there is a federal Senate inquiry into AI and data centres, TDA readers, listeners will probably be pretty familiar that that has been going on. So that's already underway. And it's looking into things like the Labour government deals with companies like open AI, Microsoft, Anthropic. And then you're right, we've got South Australia where the Premier, Peter Malinowski has announced a Royal Commission into AI, the first of its kind in the country. Now that comes off the back of him returning from meetings in the US with AI companies, open AI, Anthropic. So I guess the conversation there is that he is in the room with these companies having conversations about the future of AI in the state of South Australia and that those conversations have got him thinking or concerned about how AI specifically will work in the state. So kind of the risks and opportunities being weighed up at the same time? Exactly. And this is not a school specific inquiry. Yeah. It'll focus more broadly on the impacts of AI on work on society and that will include education, but Malinowski's did directly touch on these concerns about AI in the classroom. He said he hates the idea of quote, kids graduating from high school and they've learned how to use chat GPT, but not how to read, write or do arithmetic or how to communicate with one another. So that I suppose is a little bit of an insight into the Royal Commission. We're still waiting on an exact framework for how it will look. A report is drew back to the South Australian government by July next year. Okay. So lots of lots of different things happening. Yes. And a very fast moving space that is transforming almost on a daily basis that would appear. For any HSC students who are listening and I know that we do have students who listen to this podcast, what is the message to them? Is something going to change overnight or how does this work for their day to day at school? So if you are a year 12 student right now in New South Wales. I wouldn't be concerned that your HSC is going to be dramatically impacted by this. I'd say most schools will be continuing with whatever assessment framework that they have implemented given that it is now term three HSC exams are in October. So I'd say year 12 New South Wales right now. Don't worry about it. If you're in year 11 in New South Wales, I think that is the cohort that will be most affected by any changes. NASA is going to come back to the New South Wales government with a response with some formal advice ideally before term four begins. That's when you're 11 in New South Wales. Technically it becomes year 12 and they start their final year. That will include more detail on which subjects will include a carve out. So it should be noted, any subjects that has a major work like art or design and technology, those sort of music one. Yeah, music one, those kinds of works and subjects will probably have exemptions. So they're more creative subjects. You can't assess under exam conditions. So there will be some carve outs there. And then on the national side, the Prime Minister is meeting with state and territory leaders later this month. That's to try to agree on some uniform AI standards as part of the federal inquiry. So expect to hear a little bit more on that. And there may be some education guardrails within all of that. So interesting. And yeah, I guess as we start of what a time to be a student. Yeah. A lot of opportunities, but so many challenges as well to navigate through. Absolutely. And no one kind of has the answer it would appear at this point. Yeah, a lot of people try to figure out the answer. Yeah. Goodness me. Well, and thank you so much for taking us through that. Thanks, Sara. Do you have a tidbit? I have a tidbit. Sara, are you someone who gets bitten by mosquitoes in someone? I have been told I have really sweet blood. I have also been told I've decided that by me myself. Yeah. Okay, great. - The right person for this tip bit. I too have always identified as a mosquito magnet, but researchers at Florida International University have published this study shattering the mosquito magnet myth, showing-- - Right on special. - They're not special, but different species of mosquitoes have completely different types and tastes. So though an individual may be highly attractive to one species of mosquito, they could be totally ignored by another. - Mosquitoes, they're just like us. - They're just like us. They have a type. So FIU recruited about 120 volunteers for this study. They put them in special scent chambers with three species of mosquito. Then researchers analyzed their odors, they swabbed their forearms for bacterial species on their skin to identify their skin type. And they found that one of the species had a slight preference for men. The other two had no buyers, but they were attracted to certain scents over others. And all of these findings were presented like dating profiles. Now you know I love science communication. And I think that this is just really a really great way to break it down for the people. So for example, the Asian tiger mosquito's bio said, "I'm a bit of a fragrance knob, must smell like ketones and plant volatiles." - Whoa. - If you don't bring-- - I didn't even know what that means. - For rock on. - If you don't bring heavy skin perfume to the table, don't even bother. - Ooh. - So, likes dogs. Then we had the Southern House mosquito, who's quote, "Looking for a zero-effort match, definitely not a morning person. If your skin microbiome naturally lacks defensive volatiles, I'll see you after dark." Rapping it up finally with the yellow fever mosquito, whose dating profile says, "Looking for someone clean, naturally low on chemical defense and who doesn't wear cologne or perfume, bonus points if you're a guy, swipe left if you're covered in plant volatiles." So there you go. - Whoa. - All species are known to spread a variety of diseases. So on a more serious note, it is hope that this research will help with species-specific repellents or to improve public health outcomes. - Fun, flirty, and educational. - Thanks for having me, Sarah. That is all we have time for today. We will be back with the afternoon headlines later, but until then, have a great day. - My name is Lily Madden, and I'm a proud Arranda Bunjelang Calcutune woman from Gadigal Country. The daily odds acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present. - Last week, I spent almost $10 on a coffee. That's the same as a whole week of a gym membership at Ravow Fitness. Just $9.69 gets you access to every Revow Club any hour of the day with zero-locking contracts and no hidden fees. Check them out at revofitness.com.au.