Term 2, 2026 Newsletter: week 4

Dear Parents,

AI continues to draw intense interest among educators. Universities seem to be genuinely grappling with the phenomenon of AI-generated assessments; for them the question is more around how to build AI capacity while ensuring academic integrity. For schools, the issue is more around learning integrity than capacity-building. If a university education is geared to professional pathways, school is about foundational learning.

In this way AI marks a genuine shift for schools in their approach to the digital age. The focus is now not so much about growth in technological proficiency, but a back-to-basics, honest search for truth, beauty and goodness. Sometimes a challenging innovation is a good thing. I believe that the present challenge is such an example; happily, I also believe that it plays to our strengths. The educational shift will demand more memorisation and some level of internalisation. Students will have to demonstrate progression in their learning, while teachers will vouchsafe the integrity of the learning process. These are good and necessary things, reassuring rather than unsettling.

The AI phenomenon is a blessing for the teachers at SMMC; an opportunity to think again about the nature of teaching, learning and assessment. Teachers are reporting that many SMMC high school students are using AI to generate assignments and homework responses. Some students, it seems, have already developed a dependency. But knowledge is not sought merely for the passing of assessments. It is sought so that the lessons of the past, of literature, Science, Mathematics and especially Religion may be explored, adopted and lived; internalised, if you will. For this reason, there will be more reliance moving forward on handwritten, in-class responses and oral presentations explaining the reasons for those responses, rather than take away assignments.

There is nowhere to hide in an HSC examination room. Students enter with a pen and 13 years of preparation to respond to questions sight-unseen. This is as it should be. Something is expected of them. There is no room for passively sitting it out while the heavy lifting is left to others, and may as well be taken as a metaphor for life. In the lead up to this pivotal moment, SMMC will be giving our students the best foundation possible to succeed in their chosen pathway, professional and vocational.

Thanks, as always, for your support.

Warm regards,

Ian Smith

Principal

Week 4 Term 2, 2026 Newsletter.pdf

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