Mazenod College in Mulgrave has found evidence that nearly a quarter of its Year 12 students used artificial intelligence to cheat in a key English oral exam, and the school has already reduced marks for the work involved. The assessments were submitted two weeks ago, then drew enough suspicion from teachers to trigger a review.
The finding landed this week because it puts a hard number on a problem schools have been warning about for months. Up to 50 boys were caught up in the review, and the work was designed to test understanding of the subject and independent thinking, not just polished delivery.
Principal Paul Shannon said the college’s review identified evidence that suggested AI tools were used by several students in the oral English process. He said the affected students were spoken to and received an appropriate reduction in marks for the assessment, making the consequence immediate and academic rather than disciplinary in public view.
That scale is what makes the case stand out. Nearly a quarter of a Year 12 cohort being caught in one subject is a large breach for a single school, and it shows how quickly AI use has moved from a homework concern to a problem inside assessed exams. The state’s exam authority has already said disallowed or unattributed use of AI may breach academic integrity, while making clear that the school is responsible for investigating suspected misuse.
But Mazenod College also said it did not believe the behaviour had been coordinated, even with so many students involved. That leaves the awkward possibility that a cluster of individual decisions was enough to infect a formal assessment at once, which is harder to police than a planned cheating scheme and harder to dismiss as a one-off lapse.
Shannon said AI tools have no place in assessments and examinations because every student must be able to demonstrate their own knowledge, independently and fairly. Last week, Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority chief executive Andrew Smith said teachers were best placed to detect AI because they know their students and can interrogate their work, a view that puts classroom judgment at the center of a problem the system has not yet solved.
The review at Mazenod College has already been completed, the marks have already been cut and the students have already been spoken to. What is not yet public is which students were involved or how the AI use was detected, and whether the school will stop at reduced marks or take the matter any further.
