Teach Secondary -Issue 15.1

summarise passages, generate examples or explain concepts more simply – then we take away the secrecy. In our schools, we explicitly teach students how to use AI ethically for specific tasks. These approved uses include checking for understanding; to improve revision efficiency; to generate practice questions; and potentially rephrase something they didn’t grasp in class. The rule we teach is simple. AI may support your learning, but it cannot stand in for your learning. What about detection? Teachers often ask whether AI-detection tools are the answer. I take a cautious view. Detection will improve, but it will never be perfect, and the risk of generating false positives is too high to rely solely on automated judgements. Instead, I approach detection tools as a prompt. If they flag something, that’s a sign to talk to the student, not a cue to to jump to conclusions. The more important point to bear in mind is that if we can design homework that makes students’ learning visible, detection tools become far less necessary. Our students’ voices, the misconceptions they have and the specific steps they’ve taken can become part of the work itself. For me, the real opportunity in the AI era is to shift our existing culture around academic honesty. Rather than framing plagiarism as a punishable offence, we can instead position AI misuse as a misunderstanding of what homework is for. Unexpected benefits When students see homework as an extension of learning, rather than as a performance, they’re far more likely to use AI constructively. The conversation can start to look like this: ‘I can see you used AI to write this paragraph. Tell me what you understood and what you didn’t.’ That doesn’t close doors; it opens them. Our overall aimhere shouldn’t be to catch students out, but to help them grow into the kind of thinkers who don’t see the need to take such shortcuts. AI has given us some unexpected benefits too. It’s forced us to strengthen the link between instruction and assessment. It’s encouraged more extensive use of formative feedback, a greater emphasis on low-stakes practice and increased transparency around how learning develops. It’s pushed teachers to focus more on knowledge retrieval, application, misconceptions and reasoning – the very things that matter most in long-term retention. Perhaps most importantly of all, it’s invited us to talk openly with students about the nature of thinking . About all the messy parts, such as not hiding the draft stages and what it means to learn deeply, rather than perfectly. Homework is evolving The age of AI hasn’t killed homework. It’s made us more precise, thoughtful and realistic about what we’re actually trying to see when we set tasks. AI isn’t going away. Our task now should therefore be to build an ecosystem in which students learn to use AI responsibly, and teachers feel confident designing meaningful assignments. This way, academic honesty can become part of howwe help children grow, rather than just something we need to constantly police. Homework still matters, but its purpose has changed. It’s no longer about producing the neatest essay, but about showing the journey of learning – which is something no AI can convincingly fake. Inmany ways, all that’s really happened is that we’ve evolved into the next stage afterWikipedia-grabbing. We pivoted then, and in all likelihood, we’ll pivot again. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Anthony David is an executive headteacher working across Central and North London, and author of the book AI with Education – How to Amplify, not Substitute, Learning (see tinyurl.com/ts151-AI1 ) 65 teachwire.net/secondary E D T E C H