NSW reviews school assessment as AI challenges take-home tasks

The NSW Government has asked NESA to review how artificial intelligence is affecting student learning and assessment, including whether unsupervised take-home assessments should continue to play the same role in schools.

Assessment at Warrimoo Public School. NSW is reviewing how take-home tasks can better reflect students’ own understanding as AI use grows. Image: © State of New South Wales (Department of Education), 2023. CC BY 4.0.

Why this is overdue

AI may have prompted the review, but the underlying problem is much older.

Take-home assessment has never taken place on a level playing field. Some students have access to parents, tutors, technology and other support outside school. Others are largely on their own. That has always made it difficult to know exactly how much a piece of work reflects the student's own understanding.

Generative AI has simply made that problem impossible to ignore.

EdEvents view: This may be one of the more positive consequences of AI in education. Rather than spending all our energy trying to detect who used AI and how, schools have an opportunity to rethink assessment around what students can genuinely demonstrate, explain and produce themselves. In many ways, AI is pushing education towards a change that was overdue anyway.

Read the NSW Government announcement