Extract from ABC News
Gabe and Trevor Jones have taken on Gabe's school, the Education Department and the NSW Ombudsman after Gabe was wrongly accused of AI cheating. (ABC: Julia Bergin)
In short:
NSW public high schools are using AI detector tools to catch students allegedly cheating with AI, but some are getting it wrong.
Students say they are being pulled out of class, held back after school and forced to prove they are not cheats, while their parents are told nothing.
One father who tried to intervene landed in a six-month saga with his son's school, the NSW Department of Education and NSW Ombudsman.
The clock struck three and the school bell rang — it was home time for students at Davidson High School, but not for Gabe Jones.
He said he sat alone in a classroom, stressed and overwhelmed, as his teachers peppered him with questions about the authenticity of his year 12 assessment.
An AI detector tool had incorrectly identified Gabe's work as AI-generated and, for the second time in five days, the 18-year-old was pulled out of class and kept after school to prove he was not a cheat.
"It felt like an interrogation," he told the ABC.
"Like I was a criminal in court and I had to prove that I was a good guy."
Gabe said his teachers wanted evidence — a sentence-by-sentence breakdown of his 3,000-word assignment — to show where the information came from.
"I was sitting there, with no guidance, trying to figure out where to find all this stuff," he said.
"I remember my teacher at one point saying: 'It's OK, it's OK, we know you didn't do it, but you need to prove it … It's just a thing that we need to do because the Department of Education has told us to do it'."
Gabe Jones says Davidson High demanded he prove he was not an AI cheat. (ABC News: Julia Bergin)
While Gabe scrambled to build a case for himself, his teachers escalated it to the principal and his parents knew nothing.
"The school hadn't notified us about anything," his father, Trevor Jones, told the ABC.
Without context, Mr Jones observed his normally happy son become increasingly withdrawn.
It took a lot of questioning, but when he finally learned the north Sydney public school — Davidson High School — had wrongly accused his son of cheating with AI, Mr Jones went straight to the NSW Department of Education.
The complaint, dated May 7, 2025, and seen by the ABC, accused the school of breaching state government guidelines on appropriate use of AI detector tools.
It triggered a six-month saga involving the school, the department, and the NSW Ombudsman.
In correspondence seen by the ABC, the school told Mr Jones it answered to the department, the department said AI policies were a matter for the school and the ombudsman said it could do nothing while the department investigated.
"They've all completely lost sight of what this is about," Mr Jones said.
"Why should a child who's done nothing wrong have to defend themselves against an unreliable system?"
Unclear rules on AI detectors
Across the state, AI cheating is a big problem and many public schools are using AI detector tools to combat it.
The ABC understands they are not recommended but they are allowed.
The NSW government website currently contains no information on use of AI detector tools in schools.
But three months ago, that webpage read differently.
"There are currently no tools that can reliably detect AI generated content and their output should not be used as evidence of student use of generative AI,"the earlier version said.
In correspondence with Mr Jones, the Department of Education told him that advice came after his complaint, but archives show it appeared online more than a year before.
Mr Jones said he understood that to mean NSW public schools should not be using AI detector tools.
The Department of Education would not comment on the change.
The north Sydney public school is one of many using AI detector tools in NSW. (ABC News: Julia Bergin)
For months, Mr Jones's complaint went in circles — everything he raised about the school was given to the school so it could review itself.
"Thank you for email … regarding the management of your concerns by [Davidson High School]," one Department of Education email read.
"If you would like to seek a review, please contact [Davidson High School], as the complaint manager."
The school did not respond to the ABC but in emails to Mr Jones it said AI detector tools were used by "numerous schools" and Davidson High School had acted in line with the rules.
"At no stage has the NSW Department of Education provided any directive to cease the use of this tool," the school wrote.
The department did not comment on the allegations.
Going in circles
Next came the NSW Ombudsman.
Mr Jones lodged two separate complaints three-and-a-half months apart — the first about the Department of Education's mishandling of AI detection tools in schools and the second about the ombudsman's "lack of action" addressing the first complaint.
Both were ignored until NSW shadow minister for education Matt Cross intervened on Mr Jones's behalf.
The ombudsman then assigned Mr Jones a case manager — but only to address his second complaint about the ombudsman itself, for taking so long to respond.
Gabe's father Trevor Jones is infuriated with a "pointless" complaints process. (ABC News: Julia Bergin)
The ombudsman later concluded it could do nothing in relation to the initial complaint until the Department of Education completed its own review. It advised Mr Jones to direct any further complaints to the department.
Mr Jones said the whole process had been exhausting and "pointless".
The school took three weeks to conclude Gabe did nothing wrong, the department took five-and-a-half months to determine the school did nothing wrong, and the ombudsman took four months to rule it could make no ruling on the department.
In a statement, the ombudsman told the ABC it was standard practice to redirect complaints to the agency in question.
It also acknowledged the delays and apologised to Mr Jones for taking so long.
The Department of Education said it took academic integrity seriously and, while schools could use AI detector tools, they did not replace human judgement.
Davidson High School did not respond to a request for comment.
Different school, same story
In emails, the regional NSW high school says students get no marks if AI is detected. (ABC News: Liana Boss )
The ABC spoke to multiple NSW public high school students who said their schools had used AI detectors to wrongly accuse them of AI cheating.
Students claimed those allegations were often aired in front of the entire class and resulted in "immediate zeros".
Their parents said they were "kept in the dark" and met with resistance when they tried to intervene.
"The school's initial response was there's nothing you can do," Alison McDonald, the mother of a student, told the ABC.
Her year 11 daughter, Sophie, was given two automatic zeros in two months after an AI detector tool determined she used "100 per cent AI" to complete her assessments.
"She had put the work in and I'd seen her do the work … so I was like, 'Right, I'm not putting up with this.'" Ms McDonald said.
There were emails, phone calls and meetings with teaching staff at the regional public high school in northern NSW — Armidale Secondary College — during which Ms McDonald tried to explain that Sophie would stop trying if the school kept incorrectly calling her an AI cheat.
In correspondence seen by the ABC, the school said its policy was to give students an automatic zero if its AI detector tool deemed content was "created or enhanced" by AI.
Sophie never got her marks back, but she was allowed to redo one of her three-week take-home essays.
She said the catch was it was a tailored, supervised solo exam — one hour to answer five questions with nothing but a pen and paper in the school library.
"It definitely felt like a test to figure out if I was cheating or not,"Sophie said.
"The whole thing was just embarrassing."
Armidale Secondary College and the Department of Education did not comment on the allegations.
Call for national action
Every student the ABC spoke to said AI-cheating accusations were "humiliating" and made them the subject of "wild rumour mills" in the schoolyard.
They described classroom scenes where assessments were handed back with caveats like, "If you didn't get your marks, it's because you've been flagged for AI".
Then there were the long meetings with "panels of staff", followed by hours of work to prove the technology had it wrong.
Some students also alleged they were "actively discouraged" from fighting the cheating claims.
Jason Lodge says schools should stop trying to catch AI cheats. (Supplied: Jason Lodge)
Professor Jason Lodge, University of Queensland teaching and technology expert, said that although AI cheating was a "really complex problem" that affected both students and teachers, the current "trial and error" approach was severely disadvantaging students.
"At the moment, a lot of institutions and education sectors are trying to figure this out on their own and it's not working," he said.
"It's making students suffer."
Professor Lodge said, short term, all Australian educational institutions needed a paradigm shift — less looking for evidence of cheating and more seeking evidence of learning.
Long term, Professor Lodge said, change required "coordinated national action".
"It's going to require a significant investment across the country … and so far, I'm seeing nothing from the federal government," he said.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare declined to comment.
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