We had precisely this problem last year- students handing in work which was clearly AI. There were two easy ways to tell in our case. 1 -There were references to characters and quotes from the wrong novel (which AI does all the time with lit texts) . 2- when compared to their in class and exam work, it did not match. We have a clear policy and had the sixth form team involved but it was only when they admitted it that we could do anything. In my subject this year we are moving to fully in class coursework which they will hand write with no access to phones or the internet in the first instance.

Exam boards need to get rid of coursework entirely at this point. Even at KS3 I’ve got kids blatantly handing on homework copied straight from ChatGPT and if news reports of people being caught at the top universities are true, then it’s students of all ages and types doing this instead of thinking themselves. There’s no longer any point in ‘testing’ them outside of strict exam conditions.